JEEROLD, TENNYSON, 



A^^D 



MACAULAY. 



EDINBURGH I PRINTED BY THOMAS CONSTABLE, 

Foa 
EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS. 

LONDON HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. 

CAMBRIDGE MACMILLAN AND CO. 

I 

DUBLIN m'GLASHAN AND GILL. 

GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE. 



JERROLD, Tennyson 



AND 



M ACAULAY 



WITH OTHER CRITICAL ESSAYS 



BY 



JAMES HUTCHISON STIRLING, LL.D. 

AUTHOB OF ' THE SECKET OF HEGEL,' ETC. 




/ EDINBURGH: 

EDMONSTON & DOUGLAS. 

1868. 



{All Rights reserved.] 



^K^ 



i^ 



^^ 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

PREFATORY NOTE, vii 

DOUGLAS JEEROLD, 1 

ALFRED TENNYSON, 51 

LORD MACAULAY, 112 

DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE UPON KANT, 172 

EBENEZER ELLIOTT, 225 



PREFATOEY NOTE. 

Of these Critical Essays, the three first appeared 
in Meliora, the Social Science Quarterly Eeview, 
respectively in April 1859, October 1859, and 
April 1860. The paper on De Quincey and 
Coleridge appeared in the Fortnightly Revieiv for 
October 1867, and that on Ebenezer Elliott in the 
Supplement to the Manchester Examiner for the 
shortest day of the year 1850. Advantage has 
been taken of the opportunity afforded by re- 
publication for the insertion of certain additions 
and corrections. Perhaps a reader here and there 
may like to know that the last paper was written 
before I had gone to Germany, or even knew 
German. 



J. H. STIRLING. 



PiERSHiLL, Edinburgh, 
January 1868. 



DOUGLAS JERROLR 

" The Life of Douglas Jerrold," by his son, is an 
excellent performance. Gracefully affectionate, 
gracefully filial, it is at the same time candid, 
modest, and truthful. If one feels always that it 
is a reverent and loving son that speaks, one feels 
also that it is a sincere and loyal man. In bath 
respects, indeed, there is that in the book that 
endears the writer to the reader. Its spirit 
throughout is gentle and ingenuous ; and the 
whole series of pictures it presents seems, as it 
were, to lie pleasantly, peacefully distinct in the 
clear, mild light of an amiable and kindly nature. 
Well-arranged and orderly, all is lightly, skilfully 
touched : there is grace in what is said, and there 
is grace in what is not said. In short, the little 
book is right acceptable, right welcome. One 
feels pleased and satisfied that the man finds such 
a biographer ; one feels pleased and satisfied that 
the father owned such a son. 

A 



2 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 

Besides that knowledge of him acquired from 
his writings, it is our fortune to have possessed, 
in respect to Jerrold, just sufficient personal 
acquaintance to render this life peculiarly attrac- 
tive to us. It effects for us the rounding of the 
picture : what was known lends a charm to what 
was unknown ; and the latter points the former. 
The solemn thought, too, sighs round us like a 
ghost, that he of whom we read, he whom we 
knew, has — in the prime of life, when the harvest 
waved before him, ripe for the gathering — passed 
from among us, and will no more speak to mortals ! 
And so memories of the past mingle with the 
pictures of the present, as if to the music of far 
off, melancholy bells, while feelings rise within us 
of indefinable regret, of indefinable sadness. 

It is these feelings that have prompted— as we 
hope they will accompany and guide — the follow- 
ing notice. 

The parents of Douglas Jerrold were but stroll- 
ing players, for, even as managers of the theatre 
at Sheerness, they could hardly arrogate a higher 
title. That he was born in London (and the date 
is January 3, 1803) was probably a contingency 
due to the precarious profession of the family ; 
for it is a fact, as well that the south of England 



DOUGLAS JERROLD. 3 

was its usual habitat, as that the infant Jerrold 
was carried thither in his swaddling-clothes. The 
first four years of his life, indeed, were spent at 
Cranbrook, in Kent, where Mr. and Mrs. Samuel 
Jerrold, patronized and protected by Sir Walter 
and Lady James, " the great people of Angley," 
had thankfully set up their modest theatre under 
the rude rafters of a thatch-covered barn. The 
earliest impressions, then, of the future wit must 
have been those of green fresh pastures and tawdry 
theatrical properties, of fragrant wild-flower and 
unfragrant tallow, of the simple music of the 
sheep-bell and the squeak of fife and fiddle. The 
eyes of the fair-haired, red-cheeked, stout little 
fellow must have opened round and large over 
these antitheses, so curiously typical of the main 
perceptions and leading imagery that characterized 
the literary efforts of his later years. How strange 
it must have seemed to him to pass, perhaps on 
the occasion of a rehearsal, from the fresh com- 
mon (his little fist full, probably, of buttercups) 
into that squalid, murky bam, with its spectral 
rafters, and its skeleton-like benches, and the 
rough-hewn stage, and the coarse scenery, that 
should represent in the evening all the grandeurs 
of the earth ! Loving the breezy fields, and the 



4 DOUGLAS JERKOLD. 

fragrant hedges, and the fleecy sheep, and the 
cloud and the blue of heaven, how odd the darned 
flesh-coloured tights must have seemed to him 
— the great, glaring, staring, glass jewelry, the 
pasteboard helmet, the cavalier cloak, the brag- 
gadocio boots, the pistols, swords, and daggers ! 

Nor when, at four years of age, he was removed 
to Sheerness, could the contrasts and contrarieties 
that still surrounded him have appeared to this 
curious and eager little soul one whit less strik- 
ing. For the green meadows and the woolly sheep 
he has now the filthy streets and coarse populace 
of one of the filthiest and coarsest of seaports. In 
compensation, however, from the window of his 
lonely room — in which his good granny, for secu- 
rity, while she takes the money at the theatre, 
locks him up nightly — he can descry, away over 
the unsightly houses, the sea, and, on its glitter- 
ing bosom, frigates, queening it, or mightier bulks 
of war-ships glooming, solid, fast, like castellated 
keeps of founded stone. 

But he is not always confined now to his room 
o' nights : when such necessity presents itself, he 
too, supporting some suitable rdU, must do duty 
on the boards. Kean himself, then little bigger 
or better than a blackguard boy, has, as EoUa, 



DOUGLAS JERROLD. 5 

carried this infant to the footlights. How the 
quick, susceptible little fellow must have looked 
and wondered at the scenes he saw ! The benches, 
now no longer ghastly and spectral in the day- 
light, but filled — filled with such faces ! — the oily 
brown ones of several hundred Jacks, and the 
blowsy red ones of as many Molls ! Then the 
uproar, the whistling, the bellowing, the quarrel- 
ling, and the trampling — the loud comments, and 
the still louder accompaniments of the spectators ! 
Then the green-room, and the men and women, 
and their dressing and undressing there ! Surely 
neither variety nor contrariety is wanting here to 
excite and stimulate. Soon one of these strange 
men, in that strange green-room, takes interest 
enough in the willing little lad to teach him his 
letters ; and soon he is able to cheer his solitude, 
when locked up o' nights, with Roderick Ran- 
dom and the Death of Abel 

What a strange web of influences it is here 
given us to see ! What strange and contradictory 
materials must have constituted the thinking fur- 
niture of that poor little prisoner ! The sheep- 
bell, and the fresh meadows, and all the sweet 
scents and sights and sounds of country life are 
still dear to his memory ; and out there, far away 



6 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 

before him, is the mighty sea ! But under him 
are the filthy streets, and the mean houses, and 
the meaner people ! And again, but just at hand, 
there is that rude playhouse, where the life he 
knows so well is now at its ruddiest ! Then the 
books he reads, Roderick Random and the Death 
of AM! 

We must bear in mind, too, at what an epoch 
it is he lives ; we must bear in mind that these 
are the days of Austerlitz and Trafalgar ; when 
the armies of Napoleon are dominant on every 
land, and the fleets of Nelson vigilant in every 
sea. It is a mighty hour, and the minds of men 
are mightily stirred. Throughout all England 
there is but one element, and it is enthusiasm — 
enthusiasm for our sea- victories and enthusiasm 
for our sea-heroes — enthusiasm which leaps out 
in every look, tone, gesture of every man that 
meets his fellow on the street — enthusiasm that 
is caught up, shared, and declaimed nightly by 
every one of those poor actors within the poor 
little theatre of Sheerness. It is not wonderful, 
then, that he, too, the quick, spirited little Jerrold 
should, in such circumstances, acquire a feverish 
longing for the sea ; for it is a quick, spirited 
little Jerrold : no sickly, puny cageling, dying of 



DOUGLAS JERROLD. 7 

the pip, is this, but a stout, vigorous little fellow, 
with plenty of indignant vehemence in him, and 
an instantaneous, instinctive impulse, not to shrink 
when attacked, but to stand up fiercely for him- 
self. The sea and its contrasts, then, are the 
next experiences of little Jerrold ; but before we 
follow him thither we must advert to yet another 
source of contrast that lay for him in the char- 
acters of his parents. 

His mother was young ; his father was old — 
older than the very grandmother ; for the Mrs. 
Samuel Jerrold of whom we speak was the second 
wife of her lord, and the wife's mother was the 
junior of the wife's husband. It is she, Douglas's 
mother, who is the soul of the family, the soul 
of the theatre also ; and much reason she has to 
keep her wits about her, not for the sake of the 
young ravens only (she has two boys and two 
girls), but for that of her aged partner also. He, 
for his part, the good old man, has been cuffed, 
and huffed, and buffeted in this sad world, and 
in that sad calling of his, till he is as mild, and 
meek, and pliant as well-kneaded dough — as limp 
as manipulated pasteboard — and is content and 
happy in the quiet of whatever out-of-the-way 
corner the swirls and eddies of the draught may 



8 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 

chance to sweep Mm to. He plays any character 
— Eichmond or the Ghost in Hamlet — for his 
place now is thankfully in any gap that the 
exigencies of the occasion may present. He is 
happy, the good, quiet, well-kneaded Samuel, if 
things will just get along without stopping : he 
likes the fireside ; he likes the repose of a quiet 
novel ; he likes the serenity of a pensive pot of 
purl. His peculiar glory and his pride, however, 
the firm fundament of his life in this world, the 
soil on which he grows — what we may call his 
secret — is a pair of pumps. Pumps ! yes ; but 
then they are the pumps of Garrick; and they 
are still alive with the energy of the immortal 
sole. Poor old man ! how one sympathizes with 
him ! How one rejoices, as he rejoices, in the 
rock of those shoes, on which he can so securely 
found himself ! How one delights to know that 
his poor storm-buffeted bark had such an anchor 
to let down and ride at ! As one thinks of all 
those cuflftngs, and buffings, and buffetings, and 
of the good, limp, pliant nature into which they 
have pressed, and turned, and kneaded him, one 
is glad to think that such an undeniable foun- 
tain of consolation was conceded him as this of 
Garrick' s shoes. 



DOUGLAS JERKOLD. 9 

Douglas does not seem to have enjoyed much 
attention from his mother. She, poor woman, 
had doubtless enough to do, for, as the phrase is, 
all devolved on her ; and in after years, while 
the good, easy old man is left by the fireside, we 
get glimpses of her flitting busily hither and 
thither on provincial engagements. 

The maternal grandmother, Mrs. Eeid, whose 
maiden name was Douglas, seems to have been 
the only one from whom little Jerrold received, 
during the whole of his infancy and boyhood, 
any regular and special guidance. She seems to 
have been Scotch ; and from her, doubtless, little 
Douglas inherited, not his Scotch name only, but 
his Scotch blood also ; for that jperfervidum in- 
genium ascribed by Buchanan to the Scots was 
here, south of the Tweed, in the vehement in- 
dividuality of Douglas Jerrold, as perfectly ex- 
emplified as ever, north of the Tweed, in any of 
the children proper of the ancient Caledonia. 

One other point, which must have influenced 
the thoughts and feelings of our young ambitious 
aspirant, we must yet notice before following him 
to his ship — it is the absence of a pedigree. Mr. 
Blanchard Jerrold, as he says himself, has not 
"been at much pains to elaborate an ancestral 



10 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 

tree;" the strolling player is traced no further 
than his own father, a horse-dealer at Hack- 
ney; and all the facts of the case are as 
freely, frankly, and unreservedly stated as it has 
ever been our lot to witness on the part of any 
one discoursing in these " old-clo' " days of his 
own birth and parentage. Still human nature 
will be human nature ; and there is a touch or 
two here that are human nature itself We trust, 
however, that we shall be seen to be merely yield- 
ing to the temptation of a naturalist, and not, in 
reality, unkindly, when we just slightly accen- 
tuate a phrase or two in the family legend. 

" The son," proceeds the said legend, referring 
to Douglas's father, the strolling player, " the son 
of Mr. Jerrold, of Hackney (who was a large 
dealer in horses, at a time when horses were 
ea^gerly sought, in consequence of the long-Con- 
tinued wars), and the descendant of yet richer fore- 
fathers, the poor stroller must have remembered 
somewhat bitterly the fact, to which he often 
referred, that he had played in a barn upon the 
estate that was rightfully his own. More of his 
family he never communicated to his children!' 
There are strokes here that must come home, if 
not to the consciousness, at least to the memory 



DOUGLAS JEKKOLD. 1 1 

of many a reader ; but we are sure that all will, 
as we do, only smile with kindly recognition on 
the family myth, and respect the family euphem- 
ism. As some consolation to humanity in general, 
however, whether tree'd or treeless, we may hint 
that there exist few gentle houses, few noble 
houses, ay, few royal houses, where the family 
myths are as innocent and the family euphemisms 
as free from vulgarity. 

Jerrold's novitiate in the navy — for, as we 
have hinted, after some five years of reading, 
writing, and arithmetic, and just eleven years of 
age, to the sea he went — was neither of long 
duration nor of much vicissitude. He entered as 
a first-class volunteer, and remained but twenty- 
two months in the service. One year and four 
months he spent at the Nore, on board a guard- 
ship ; and only during six months had he any 
experience of active service. We can fancy with 
what pride, with what hopes, with what aspira- 
tions, he first trod the deck of a man-of-war. 
Still, the gloss of novelty once dulled, the ways 
of the ship once mastered, and the characters of 
those around him once comprehended, life on 
board must have appeared to his eager, restless 
nature but wearisome and monotonous. The 



12 DOUGLAS JERKOLD. 

captain seems to have been kind to him ; for he 
allows him to read Buffon in the cabin, and in- 
dulges him in the recreation of a flight of pigeons. 
Without doubt, also, little Douglas employed un- 
ceasingly both those sharp eyes and those quick 
ears of his, and stored up daily in his memory 
picture after picture and thought after thought. 
Still he must have sighed for active service. 
Whether he liked it, when he had an oppor- 
tunity of judging, scarcely appears; but it seems 
he thought it his duty in after life, when con- 
sulted by any young aspirant, rather to dissuade 
than encourage. Life must have been uncom- 
fortable enough, one would think, during the six 
months that — visiting Ostend, Tex el, Heligoland, 
and Cuxhaven the while — he was tossed in that 
little brig the ' Ernest,' from the Thames to the 
Elbe and from the Elbe to the Thames again. 
His hammock was stolen, and he had to sleep as 
he could. He had his disgraces and his diffi- 
culties, his haps and his mishaps; but no event 
of any importance distinguished the short career 
of the little middy. He saw a man flogged — saw 
and sickened as he saw — and the brutality stuck 
to his memory. He transports from Belgium a 
number of the wounded of Waterloo ; and has an 



DOUGLAS JEEROLD. 13 

opportunity of hearing something of war from 
those who had seen and suffered. 

There are lessons involved here that we find 
turning up in many a page of the future author. 
His heart must have been at the bottom very 
tender; for that lacerated sailor and these wounded 
soldiers have engraved themselves deeply there. 
Other lessons, also, he doubtless learned. These 
were the days of brutal fun, of ferocious jocosity ; 
Douglas was proud, of purer heart and higher 
intellect, we may believe, than any of his mates, 
and vehemently indignant at injustice; his frame, 
too, though stout and active, could not have been 
brawny: many cruelties must he have suffered, 
many mortifications borne. If young gentlemen 
were at all constituted then as they are every- 
where now-a-days, his antecedents of birth must 
have been often enough flung in his face, and 
awakened in his breast the keenest and fiercest 
of emotions. The teachings of experience were 
here in abundance then. 

Altogether, though so far as book-learning is 
concerned, he is as yet not very far advanced, 
and has no acquirements but reading, writing, and 
arithmetic, still we may, without hesitation, assert 
that, as regards insight into this practical world 



14 DOUGLAS JERKOLD. 

and the conditions of existence, young Jerrold is 
wiser, riper, and maturer than many a much older 
youth who, as yet, has only learned and learned, 
and read and read, within the walls of schools 
and colleges. 

And conscious of this ripe experience, as well 
as proud of his increased strength and stature, 
must have been our gallant little middy of 
thirteen, as, leaving his ship for ever, he stepped 
once again ashore at Sheerness to greet his rela- 
tives. But, ah ! how sad that greeting ! Hot 
tears must have fallen on his cheeks with the 
kisses of his friends, for to them the world is 
changed. The theatre is broken up ; the family 
is ruined ; the good old manager has no consola- 
tion longer even in the shoes of Garrick ; for 
neither he nor they will ever tread the boards 
again. A sad reverse for them— a fearful reverse 
for the proud young midshipman ! The result is 
— after two months of an eclipsed existence in 
familiar Sheerness, while the young wife has gone 
bravely forth to seek some other resting-place 
for her helpless children and her equally helpless 
husband — a migration to London. 

Broad Court, Bow Street, where the wanderers 
found shelter, could have offered no very cheering 



DOUGLAS JERKOLD. 15 

aspect to the high-hearted, crashed young middy ; 
but, like some scenes we have seen already, it cut 
itself deep in his brain, and was stamped, in after 
days, on many a vigorous paragraph. Broad 
Court was a poor court ; and every reader that 
has seen such has already before his eyes the pro- 
per picture. The houses are, of course, wretched, 
and the population teeming ; but the character- 
istic feature is the children — ragged and dirty, 
but hot and loud with game or battle in the 
midst of squalor, filth, and meanness. Jerrold, 
to be sure, was but thirteen ; and, at that age, 
the heart is usually light, while the memory is 
but short for anything better or worse than the 
present : still he was, in intellect and experience, 
riper, older than his years, and his proud nature 
must have been deeply galled. Picture him, in 
such a place, amid such a population, skulking — 
skulking /rom the door, to the door — still in his 
uniform ! 

What all this taught Jerrold can be read in 
every page of his writings. Hitherto, his life has 
been a life of contrasts : at Cranbrook, at Sheer- 
ness, on board the ' Namur,' on board the ' Ernest,' 
— wherever he has been, contrast has been forced 
upon him. For Douglas Jerrold, the universe has 



16 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 

been cast on the principle of contradiction : what 
the Germans call the Satz of Wider spruch has 
ruled his horoscope. But here, in Broad Court, it 
is that the contrast of contrasts, the antithesis of all 
antitheses, impresses itself on the heart and brain 
of Jerrold. Here it is that all the mighty mean- 
ing of the words Eich and Poor begins to unfold 
itself. And from this time on, this contrast 
will continue to impress itself, and this meaning 
to unfold itself ; for pain, privation, labour, will 
be the constant companions of this proud, eagle- 
hearted youth for many years yet. Poverty — 
ignorance, vice, crime; riches — selfishness, inso- 
lence, arrogance ; the inequalities of fate ; the 
injustices of fortune : these are the cuds he 
ruminates, till the fierce thoughts of the vehement, 
indignant man leap into the lightnings of keen 
and passionate speech. 

Meantime bread has to be won ; and little 
Douglas is apprenticed to a printer. Whatever 
regrets the late midshipman may have felt on 
this occasion, we may be sure that, in view of 
Broad Court, the parting with his uniform was 
not one of them. His, too, is, after all, a suscep- 
tible, impressible nature ; and he soon reconciles 
himself to his new position. Nay, he takes a 



DOUGLAS JEREOLD. 17 

colour from it : books becomes mighty favourites 
with him ; and he acquires an enthusiasm for 
literature. It is probable, indeed, that an enthu- 
siasm of this kind was not difficult to kindle in 
the reader of Roderick Random and The Death 
of Abel. How eagerly, how indomitably, he 
throws himself on the new pursuits ! Early as 
the printer is obliged to go to work, still earlier 
rises the student, and applies himself to his. At 
meal-times, too, his books undergo a longer mas- 
tication than his victuals. Finally, at night, the 
body, after its twelve hours of drudgery, may be 
wearied if it will, but the mind shall not ; and 
the evening shall end as the morning began, with 
books. And what are those books ? If it is for 
his poor old father, now invalided in the chimney- 
corner, that the good-hearted lad is pleased to 
read aloud volume after volume of Scott's Novels, 
it is for himself that he reads Shakespeare, reads 
him till he has him by heart and can quote every 
line of him. But there are drier studies necessary 
for his assumption of a literary position ; and 
these shall not affright him. Burns, in penitent 
moments, when resolved on steadiness, would re- 
turn, ever and anon, " to his Latin again." But 
Jerrold, with greater patience, with greater per- 

B 



18 DOUGLAS JERKOLD, 

severance, remained hy his Latin, and, to a con- 
siderable extent, as Ijis whole dialect and general 
use of words testify, conquered it. Nor Latin 
only : French, Italian, German, were all in suc- 
cession objects of study with him, and all of them 
more or less acquired. Brave, then, as the little 
midshipman on board the ' Namur' or the ' Ernest' 
may have been, braver, far braver, we may fear- 
lessly pronounce this wearied stripling of a printer, 
in his mean little room in Broad Court, with the 
Latin Grammar in his hand. 

We are glad to learn, however, that the due 
meed of relaxation is not denied him. Orders for 
the theatres are not rare, as is to be expected, in 
such a family ; and we may readily surmise that 
one member, at all events, would neither refuse 
nor neglect them. These are the days, too, be it 
recollected, of Kean and Kemble ; and the aspir- 
ing stripling is privileged alternately to glow and 
quiver before the grandest Hamlets and Othellos 
the world has ever seen. These theatrical experi- 
ences bias his literature : it is for the stage he 
would write ; it is as the guild-brother of Shake- 
speare he would appear. So to dramas he applies 
himself. He was only fifteen when his first piece 
was written ; and only eighteen when he had the 



DOUGLAS JERKOLD. 19 

pleasure of seeing it performed — when he had the 
pleasure of seeing it succeed. A very singular 
and rare experience for so young a lad ! 

But he is not one-sided in his labours : besides 
dramatic, there are other literary efforts ; and 
these, too, succeed. Copies of verses he has the 
bliss to see printed in the magazines ; and one 
morning his master, who seems to have been editor 
as well as proprietor of a newspaper, puts into his 
hands, to be set by him in type — " joy !" — an 
article of his own !" accompanied, too, by an invi- 
tation to write again ! Surely the world is open- 
ing for our brave apprentice, and his fortune near ! 
Ah, no ! it is but the gleam of sunshine in the 
early morning of a dismal day. If in the brain 
or breast of the successful boy- contributor, of the 
successful boy-dramatist, any wind of arrogance, 
any air of presumption have developed itself, most 
rudely will it be shaken out of him — most bitterly 
will it be expiated. For there await him years 
of incessant labour, years of frustrated hope, years 
of cruel disappointment, before his name shall 
emerge from obscurity and his place be fixed. 

But these bitter experiences shall not be all 
unsweetened, and these dark days not all un- 
cheered; he shall have a friend, and he shall 



20 DOUGLAS JEREOLD. 

have a wife. Of the latter, whom he marries 
when he is bnt one-and-twenty, we are not em- 
powered to speak. The son could not with pro- 
priety have expatiated on the virtues of the liv- 
ing mother : the tone of the dedication, however, 
and the affectionate modesty of every word he 
uses when obliged to speak of her, assure us of 
the esteem in which he holds her, and supply a 
basis for that of the public also. Fancy will add 
the rest. The soothment of young love — the con- 
solation of an absolute sympathy — the strength 
of purpose inspired by the consciousness of re- 
sponsibility, — these and all other skiey influences 
that troop in the train of marriage which the 
heart has led, each of us shall picture for himself 

But let us linger a moment over the early 
friend : it is Laman Blanchard, whose grave is 
now no longer lonely, for that of Jerrold — the 
friend of his youth, the friend of his heart — lies 
there beside it. And it is fitting that, dead, they 
should thus lie near each other, they who, living, 
were bound together in such intimate and familiar 
union. 

The soft, gentle, Shelley-like Blanchard seems 
to have looked to his harder, bolder, and more 
resolute companion, as to the master-mind- that 



DOUGLAS JERROLD. 21 

had a riglit and possessed the power to sway and 
guide him. His pure, open, unselfish nature 
directly acknowledges this. In 1826, he writes 
to Jerrold : " Such as my nature is, it is not too 
much to say that it has been almost moulded by 
you ; and certainly of late years, nothing has 
been admitted into it that has not received your 
stamp and sanction." Then further on in the 
same letter, it is even with feminine tact that he 
writes : " If you think I can share my mind with 
others as I have done with you, let me refer you 
to a passage in ' Childe Harold,' commencing — 

' Oh ! known the earliest and esteemed the mosV " 

There are allusions here and there too in this 
correspondence, to quarrels and to reconciliations 
of quarrels, that are particularly instructive and 
suggestive. It is not friends, in fact, we see ; it 
is a pair of lovers ! Blanchard is the lady, and 
in her loving, innocent spontaneousness, she is 
perpetually giving unconscious offence to her 
exacting, irritable, and somewhat perverse lord; 
she is, ever and anon, startled at his moody 
jealousies, alarmed by his fierce looks, and full of 
wonder as to what she had done ; her allusions to 
" jarrings when we meet in company, and a con- 



22 DOUGLAS JERIIOLD. 

straint when we are alone" are peculiarly toucli- 
ing, and faithfully depict the whole case. It is a 
pretty love-quarrel, in short, a pretty miff; and 
from this troubling of the waters we understand 
both friends better. 

We are glad, then, that Jerrold has such friends 
to cheer his battle — for to him life is a battle, and 
this world the field of a most unequal fight. All 
the years of his early manhood are but one series 
of ingrate toils and unacknowledged labours. For 
magazines and journals he writes scores upon 
scores of articles ; and for the theatres, a whole 
host of pieces. Of these latter, some fifty have 
been specially enumerated ; and fully thirty seem 
to have been written before their author could 
have counted as many years. Some of these, like 
" Black- eyed Susan," are eminently successful, 
replenishing the coffers of vulgar, dissipated, 
greedy managers, but bringing to their author a 
renewal only of neglect, disappointment, and in- 
justice. Throughout all these years, in fact, up 
almost to his connexion with Punch, in 1841, 
we see him, a lean, pale, hard, exasperated little 
figure, standing by a gulf, over which he hopes 
presently to be able to pass by means of the 
masses of paper which he flings in ; but, alas ! 



DOUGLAS JEEROLD. 23 

the remorseless black maw swallows them all up, 
like snow, before his eyes ; and there burst from 
his lips the fiery imprecations of a tearful wrath, 
and the fierce invectives of a scornful indignation. 
Few authors have ever undergone a more pro- 
tracted ordeal or passed through a longer novitiate 
than Jerrold. And when, at last, his bark did — 
after veerings, and tackings, warpings-in, and 
warpings-out, in the dirtiest weather and the 
most intricate of channels — reach the open sea, 
and the fog rose up and showed the shoals behind 
and the whole ocean of success in front, it was 
wonderful to find it still so hale and hearty, still 
so true and cheery, still so sound and pure at the 
core, if at the same time, also, it must be con- 
fessed, somewhat dull and indifferent, somewhat 
sceptical and incredulous as to the advantages of 
the voyage at all, and inclined rather to drop 
anchor and enjoy the sunshine. 

The products of his literary activity during this 
period need hardly occupy us. In later life, they 
were, for the most part, condemned as worthless 
by their own author, who spoke even of the re- 
markably successful *' Black-eyed Susan,'' and the 
equally successful " Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lec- 
tures/' as trash and lollipop, and desired to assume 



2 4 DOUGLAS JEKROLD. 

the honours of paternity for such works only as 
"St. Giles and St. James/' "Time works Won- 
ders/' " A Man made of Money/' and " The Chro- 
nicles of Clovernook." Even of these latter works, 
it does not enter within the scope of our design to 
speak in any detail at present. We feel more 
occupied with the man than his works, and would 
use the latter only to demonstrate and illustrate 
the former. Indeed, it is doubtful if even these 
latter works possess themselves any very certain 
germ of an enduring vitality. For the conditions 
of literature are involved, now-a-days, in processes 
of transformation that are as yet neither ex- 
plained nor explored ; and there is now the ever- 
increasing possibility of the existence of both 
talent and genius — clothed, too, in forms that, 
two or three generations ago, would have ap- 
peared marvels magnificent as palaces of Aladdin 
— but without the least chance of either emi- 
nence or permanence of place in the progres- 
sion of the ages. Every reader of experience is 
aware of examples even in the great world ; and 
there is hardly a circle in the kingdom but can 
point to literary powers that seem but as seed 
flung on the rocks or dropped on the roads. And, 
indeed, it is surprising with what equanimity 



DOUGLAS JEKROLD. 25 

they who recognise and lament the injustice ac- 
quiesce in the arrangement, and neglect the 
neglected. That this may be the fate of Jerrold, 
is, at least, to be apprehended. His prominence 
in the world was certainly attributable rather to 
extrinsic than intrinsic causes, though, of course, 
the latter are even prodigally present. At all 
events, we may say with assurance that, on the 
whole — despite one or two exceptions, which are 
themselves but temporary, perhaps — Jerrold's 
literary works have never struck deep root into 
public estimation, or enjoyed any very extended 
genuine popularity. Jerrold, no doubt, issued 
from that laborious novitiate of more than twenty 
years a finished literary athlete, agile, supple, 
swift, with the power of accomplishing the most 
astonishing feats, as it were spontaneously, almost 
involuntarily. Certainly the sinew of writing had, 
by that terrible practice, developed itself, as he 
said himself, " like the smith's arm." But were 
there no drawbacks to this marvellous facility, 
no shortcomings in this wonderful ability ? Are 
there no such things as the evils of premature, 
are there no such things as the evils of incessant 
authorship ? Is it true that the more a man 
writes, the better and ever longer the better he 



26 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 

will write ? Is it true, that the sooner he begins 
the better he will end? We doubt both posi- 
tions ; we doubt the advantages of a man becom- 
ing a literary athlete at all, unless, indeed, his 
function be a mere matter of business, and his 
place that of scribe to some daily or weekly 
journal. If a man have any higher possibility 
than this in him — if it is to the giant. Genius, 
that he is to give birth — it is certainly not by 
becoming a literary athlete that he will accom- 
plish his deliverance in any adequate or satisfac- 
tory form. The feats of the one athlete, like those 
of the other, however dazzling their facility, have 
only a temporary and extrinsic value ; their secret 
too is soon discovered, and the repetition palls. 

We* have done our best to love the writings of 
the brave Jerrold ; but images and ideas like 
these will ever intrude, and we wander from the 
book to theorize endlessly on the evils of prema- 
ture and professional authorship. And yet we 
admit at once that Jerrold is a writer who has 
widely influenced the literary, political, and social 
opinions of his period ; that he is an able writer, 
a vigorous writer ; a man as dexterous with his 
pen as any master of fence with his rapier ; a 
coiner and utterer of richest, raciest, subtlest say- 



DOUGLAS JERKOLD. 27 

ings. We admit, too, that with the names of 
Dickens and Thackeray that of Jerrold also must 
be always associated ; but even while conceding 
him this parity of place beside both, we assert 
that this place has mainly a mere external founda- 
tion, and that his writings have never exercised a 
tithe of the influence or acquired a tithe of the 
renown of those of either. 

Like that of some of the wits of the bygone 
century, his fame, indeed, may, at the last, prove 
an affair of tradition rather than document. He 
is essentially, even in his best writings, the sayer 
of good things, of strong things — the wit of clubs. 
His works are not so much carefully -meditated, 
carefully - elaborated, carefully - finished literary 
wholes, in which the fervid soul of an original 
author has accomplished the embodiment of the 
deep feelings and deep thoughts which he knows 
to be his own, which seem to him to have been 
born with him, which seem to him to live and 
move in him, tormenting him to speech — not so 
much these as collections rather of hard, sharp, 
effective hits in words. He writes, saccade, as if in 
blows. We feel as if we had to do with a master 
of attack whose rapid upper-cuts and unexpected 
back-handers were perpetually surprising and 



28 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 

confounding us. His style and manner faithfully 
reflect his experiences, and declare him to have 
been a fighter, a bitter fighter, against adverse 
fortune and opposing circumstances. As we said 
already, contrast reigns; contrast is his secret. 
Of the three laws of association, one has no diffi- 
culty in deciding which it is that dominates the 
thoughts of Jerrold. It is from the perception of 
contrast that he rises on the wings of scorn and 
indignation to dart the lightnings of his epigram, 
and scatter lavishly the imagery of antithesis. 

How keen he is, how bright, how swift, how 
polished ! the points in his writing are like the 
points of needles. One feels sometimes, indeed, 
as if Jerrold thought in needles— wrote in needles. 
His very handwriting, " smaller than printed 
types," seems to have been the work of just such 
an implement. But if Jerrold dealt in needles, 
one must say it was a trade he was driven to. 
One could not eat the bread of the flinty Davidge 
or the brassy Elliston without being converted 
largely into iron ; whence it would be some solace 
to fabricate needles wherewith to pierce these 
false giants to the core. How beneath the swift 
puncture of the all but invisible weapon they 
must have winced and winced again ! 



DOUGLAS JERKOLD. 29 

But his living depended on these giants ; and 
this was the secret of his defects both as man and 
writer. Oh, it is fine work to fight a giant, bat 
most miserable bondage to eat the bread of a 
giant ! Under such bondage, the brightest, bravest 
soul will become at length hardened and embit- 
tered. Under such bondage, the very richest 
writer will become poor; for the necessities of 
the moment press ; he must write and write — 
and ever for the same poor pittance — till all the 
germinal thoughts of his fresh young mind are 
wastefuUy dug up and scattered, to die of inani- 
tion, over a score of reams, leaving at last, for the 
enchanted palaces he had projected and the big 
soul he had hoped to grow to, nothing without 
him but an endless chaos of piecemeal stones, 
and nothing within him but — the trick of the 
trade ! 

Such is the result of extempore literature. 
When success arrives, all one's Promethean fire 
is well-nigh burned out ; one has well-nigh ceased 
to believe in it ; there are no longer any of those 
cherished secrets in the heart for which one 
hoped a glorious utterance. Literature is no 
longer a realm of Faery ; no longer a magic 
region, in which one's young resolves are all at 



30 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 

length accomplished ; in which the mighty good 
one planned is now achieved and realized; in 
which one stands up to one's full height ; in which 
one pours out, in free and unimpeded accents, 
one's whole glorious inner being. It is now a 
trade; a thing dull, dead, mechanical; it no 
longer glows, it is made to seem to glow. 

One has written so much, too, that one learns 
economy. A thought is not to be lost, at so much 
a page. We no longer dart an idea ; we seize it 
as it rises ; we turn it and twist it ; we smite it 
and strike it ; and so long as one spark will leap, 
or one clang ring, we will continue to strike it 
and smite it. We know that figures in our 
fingers are tortured ghosts ; we hear them cry to 
us : " Let me go now, then ! — have you not done 
with me yet ? — for mercy's sake, good sir, let me 
pass !" An example will explain this : — 

'' Jingo was born for greatness. He had in his 
character the great element of a great general — 
a great statesman ; marvellous self-possession. 
Meaner boys would have been in a flutter of im- 
patience; not so with the pupil of Tom Blast. 
Hence, he sat under the bed, with critical ear, 
listening to the hard breathing of the drunken 
man, who soon began to snore with such discor- 



DOUGLAS JEKROLD. 31 

dant vehemence that Jingo feared the sleeper 
might awaken his bottle friend, Mr. Folder. Jingo 
knew it not ; but his testimony would have been 
very valuable to Mrs. Tangle ; for the snoring of 
her husband was one of the disquietudes of that 
all-suffering woman ; the rather, too, that the 
man constantly denied his tendency to the habit. 
He never snored. Of course not; nobody ever 
does. ISTow Jingo might have been a valuable 
witness on the side of Mrs. Tangle, who could 
never succeed, talk as she would, in impressing 
her husband with a sense of his infirmity. On 
the contrary, her accusation was wont to be re- 
pelled as a gross slander; an imputation un- 
worthy of a wife and a woman. It is bad enough 
to endure an evil, but to have the nuisance treated 
as a malicious fiction makes it intolerable. And 
Mrs. Tangle felt it so. Of this, however, by the 
way. Eeturn we to Jingo. 

"With knowing, delicate ear, the child con- 
tinued to listen to the stertorous agent. At length, 
the boy crept from beneath the bed, and treading 
as lightly as a fairy at a bridal couch, he made 
his way to a window. Now, had anybody at- 
tempted to open it for any honest purpose — had 
Molly, the maid, for instance, sought to raise it 



32 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 

merely to give her opinion of the moon and the 
night to any rustic astronomer below — it is very 
certain that the window w^oiild have stuck, and 
jarred, and rattled ; it was too old and crazy to be 
made a comfortable confident in any such foolish 
business. Ten to one, but it had waked the 
mistress of the Olive Branch, who would inevi- 
tably have nudged the master. And now a rob- 
bery was to be done — a most tremendous robbery 
— perhaps to be further solemnized by homicide 
— for who should say that the Parcae, who wove 
the red tape of the life of Tangle, attorney-at-law, 
were not about to snip it ? — who shall say that 
so awful a crisis did not at that moment impend 
— and yet silently went the window up ; easily, 
smoothly, as though greased by some witch ; 
smeared with fat ' from murderer's gibbet/ It is 
a pity that the devil makes evil so very easy to 
the meanest understanding. 

" Two or three minutes passed, not more, and 
Tom Blast thrust his head and one of his legs 
into the chamber " ^ 

We shall be glad if the reader turn up and 
read at greater length the original for himself 
Our limits will not allow us a longer extract : 

^ From ^^St. Giles and St. James," chapter xxii. 



DOUGLAS JERKOLD. 33 

we hope, however, that, such as it is, it will suffice 
to render our remarks intelligible, and that the 
method and secret of Jerrold's progression in 
composition will now rise up more or less clear to 
every reader. The snoring, it is seen, furnishes 
one paragraph, and the opening of the window 
another. Then it will be found, that two other 
paragraphs of similar digressive moralities con- 
trive to unwind themselves, while Tom Blast is 
kept astride of the window-sill. And even when 
allowed to descend, access to the money is still, 
and for a long time yet, denied him. The robber, 
like the author himself, is not at all in the smallest 
hurry ; he, too, must moralize. Light in hand, he 
considers Tangle with the most meditative calm ; 
a vein of philosophic reflection develops itself in 
the housebreaker ; and so, paragraph after para- 
graph, now in soliloquy and now in dialogue, con- 
tinues to evolve itself out of the most extraneous 
material. The writer, in fact, seems to be thank- 
ing heaven for every new stick, stone, or straw he 
can lug into his service ; and it is only after full 
eight pages of mere moralization that the informa- 
tion is finally vouchsafed us that Jingo, having 
been concealed under the bed, opens the window 
to Tom Blast, who, forcing the closet containing 

c 



34 DOUGLAS JEREOLD. 

the gold, succeeds in robbing Mr. Tangle while 
asleep drunk. Is it at all wonderful that we 
should get impatient at such a manner of telling 
a story ? Is it at all wonderful that, again and 
again, in the course of these eight pages, the reader, 
on the rack, longing for a step, a stir, a move for- 
ward of any kind, should exclaim with Hamlet : 
" Begin, murderer ; leave thy damnable faces, and 
begin''? 

Nay, the author himself appears to side with 
the reader, for he says : " The thoughtless reader 
may deem it strange — unnatural— that a man 
about to perpetrate gibbet-work should thus coolly 
delay, and after his own fashion moralize. But 
then the reader must ponder on the effect of long 

habit* In his first battle, Julius Caesar ." 

And then we have another digression ; and so, 
after all, it is not the position of the reader that 
is improved, it is that of the writer — by another 
paragraph ! Let it be understood, however, that 
we do not deny the quality of the writing as 
writing ; it is always hard, firm, terse, clear, trans- 
parent, admirable writing. But then, it is only 
writing ; it is not thought. The skill is great ; 
but then it is only skill : it is not art ; it is 
husiness. 



DOUGLAS JERROLD. 35 

We have not chosen our extract with malice 
prepense ; we took it at a venture. Jerrold's 
manner of writing will be found, throughout his 
works, generally similar. If there be any excep- 
tion it is in the inaugural chapters, which, for 
the most part, are written freshly, flowingly, 
triumphantly, as if from a full heart and a full 
soul. Jerrold, indeed, is always buoyant, elastic, 
alert at the start : he is not long-breathed, how- 
ever ; he soon flags — inspiration fails, and work 
grows drudgery.-^ Then it is that the writing 
becomes similar to that which we have quoted. 
It looks artificial and mechanical ; the deft hand 
turns it and turns it tiU it shines again, but the 
hand seems only there ; the heart seems other- 
where : the heart, in fact, seems to be constantly 
saying to itself : " This is weariness of the flesh ; 
this is but the trick of the trade : if I had my 
own will it is not here I should be sitting, play- 
ing upon words and ringing the changes upon 
sentences !" 

1 Jerrold started a monthly magazine and a weekly newspaper. 
The course of these ventures will be found to corroborate what 
is said above. We may add that Jerrold's politics, as seen in 
these publications, also illustrate the man. On the great ques- 
tions of the day, on politics proper, he feels out of his depth ; 
before he can speak, he requires some anecdote, some sally of 
general humanity, some concrete case, just or unjust, to give him 
at once a meaning and a purpose. 



36 DOUGLAS JEEKOLD. 

We find Jerrold himself confessing this in loud 
soliloquy to the reader. In chapter xii. of " St. 
Giles and St. James " we find him talking quite 
misgivingly of the whole trade of fiction-spin- 
ning ; of what we once named novel-blowing. He 
there, of his own tale, asks doubtingly, " if this 
small toy of a history may be allowed to have im- 
portant moments !" But his thought is more 
explicitly stated here : " All this delay, we know, 
is a gross misdemeanour committed on the reader 
of romance : who, when two lovers meet, has all 
his heart and understanding for them alone, and 
cares not that the writer — their honoured parent, 
he it remembered — should walk out upon the fools- 
cap and begin balancing some peacock's feather on 
his nose!' Novelists, it must be confessed, are 
seldom honest enough to avow their own views 
of their own industry, and disenchant their 
readers in this plain fashion. This sentence, in 
fact, if taken with the context, will be found 
quite crucial ; and it needs only to read " lovyers*' 
for " lovers,'' and " parients " for '^ parents," to 
show up the inherent bosh of the whole business. 
So far as Jerrold is concerned, there is a tone of 
fatigue in the whole passage : we see the weary 
scepticism with which he views the vanity and 



DOUGLAS JEEKOLD. 37 

inanity of spinning those ropes of barren sand 
that now-a-days are misnamed novels : we see the 
bitterness and dissatisfaction with which he re- 
cognises in his digressions and moralizations but 
the balancing of a feather and the trick of the 
trade. In such state of mind it is no wonder 
that his analogies are often so remote and distant 
that they appear impressed — crimped — vi et armis 
crimped into his service ; and that the writing 
seems, at times, a precipitate, exasperated spurt, 
as if the author, in sudden resolution, had dashed 
the rowels into his own flank. 

We do not contemplate here any regular and 
complete criticism of Jerrold's writings ; but we 
must remark, in passing, that the characters and 
conduct of the story display faults quite similar 
to those we signalize. The characters are never 
creations, and seldom portraits : these Jerichos, 
and Cuttlefishes, and Canditofts, and Capsticks, 
and Bright Jems, and Tom Blasts, have no life of 
their own ; they have the life only of their author ; 
they are but his puppets, and discourse at his 
motion and in his dialect. The conduct of the 
story in general may be understood from the 
extract we have already quoted. The incidents 
are few; each is made the most of, nor passes 



3 8 DOUGLAS JERKOLD. 

till its ultimate drop is wrung. The finale is 
merely arbitrary, and, as is to be expected, 
comes at last by a simple pulling down of the 
curtain. 

In fact, we are carried always back to the 
evils of premature authorship. When Jerrold 
reached middle-life, and had acquired his audi- 
ence, he was already hlase ; he had now no 
longer enthusiasm, and hardly hope. Sitting 
there at his desk, and having with ready alacrity 
and prompt vigour stamped with his own brand 
the living interests and current topics of the day 
for the columns of Punch, it was only with 
unwillingness, we fancy, that he turned him to 
his other writings. These things in Punch 
were alive ; they had the red blood of the day in 
them : but those others, the creatures of his fancy, 
in his other and apparently more proper tasks, 
were but pale abstractions. The world was no 
longer what the golden boy had dreamed it was. 
His illusions were all gone. The evils of life 
were too gigantic ; he heard them roaring all too 
unappeasably aroimd him : he could no longer 
believe in a transforming "Presto'' of the pen. His 
fancy was no longer an inspiration ; it lay in his 
hands a tool — a tool that he could most dexter- 



DOUGLAS JERROLD. 39 

ously use, but still a tool. Ever to cut and 
carve out weapons wherewith to pierce the wrongs 
he could no longer hope to redress, was irksome 
to him. His past lay behind him like a fearful 
dream. Why should he work ? he thought. Had 
he not worked enough ? — and he shivered. No ; 
there in the club was the ruddy reality of life ; 
there were living men to speak with ; there were 
opportunity and matter for living thought and 
living speech. So the club became his arena, and 
the solitary chamber, deserted of the enthusiasm 
that once had made it bright, was chill to him 
as the cell of monk. 

The estimate we have thus put upon his writ- 
ings may appear to many much too narrow, much 
too niggardly. We may seem to have flung but 
coldly, summarily, into the scales the products of 
a life for which we professed so much sympathy. 
Formal criticism has not been own object, how- 
ever ; and we hope that, while endeavouring to 
trace in the tissue the thread derived from the 
prematurity and necessity of the authorship, we 
have not unduly depreciated the signal and 
essential merits of the tissue itself To that 
tissue, genius, as well as talent, has set its stamp ; 
and it is heavy with gems with which, hereafter, 



40 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 

many a pilgrim will seek to decorate his own 
plainness. The reader, we think, will easily dis- 
cern withal that, even in the discussion of his 
literature, we have really been working at the 
figure of the man, and that that figure has now 
received its final and concluding touch. Yes ; that 
last glimpse of him, as he turned his lack upon his 
study in haste to reach his club, is the finish of the 
picture as we designed it. We believe the reader 
to have it in his power to see now the whole 
growth and history of the character of Jerrold. 
For from this time out his career offers no vicis- 
situdes but those of literary life in general, and 
is unmarked by a single salient incident. Why 
chronicle his changes of residence, his changes 
of theatres, his changes of periodicals, his 
changes of clubs, his changes of trips and tours ? 
Each series but marks the road he travelled from 
penury and obscurity, through toil and suffering, 
up to affluence and fame. It is not our part, 
either, to follow him to that last dinner at Green- 
wich ; and still less is it for us to intrude our 
presence into the sad and solemn scene of the 
8th of June 1857, when the brave soul, sur- 
rounded by his loved ones, whispered, " This is 
as it should be," and passed away. 



DOUGLAS JEKKOLD. 41 

One word of personal reminiscence, however, 
shall here be added. 

It has been said, that '' if every one who had 
received a kindness from the hand of Douglas 
Jerrold flung a flower on his grave, the spot would 
be marked by a mountain of roses." The present 
writer is one of those who has received such kind- 
ness ; and he, too, would fling what flower it is his 
to bring upon the grave. 

The prospectus of the Shilling Magazine had 
reached me, busy with professional avocations, in 
the heart of the iron district of South Wales ; 
and its calm, high, generous tone of universal 
sympathy, hope, promise, spoke at once to my in- 
most feelings. The first number corresponded to 
the promise of the prospectus, and I could not 
resist penning and transmitting an article to the 
editor. In a few days after despatch of my paper, 
I was surprised by the receipt of a small note in 
a hand unknown to me — in a hand altogether 
unexampled in any correspondence I had yet seen. 
In motion evidently facile, fluent, swift — swift 
almost as thought itself — it was yet as distinct in 
its peculiar decisive obliquity as if it had been 
engraved — sharp and firm in its exquisitely 
minute fineness as if the engraving implement 



42 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 

had been the keenest of needles. " Surely," 
thought I, "the Iliad in a nut-shell is now con- 
ceivable." 

It may readily be supposed that I opened and 
read this note with no inconsiderable curiosity. 
There it is now before me, that little note, in its 
browning envelope, the delicate trenchant tracery 
of the superscription confessing to the action of the 
river of time. There it lies before me, and all the 
emotions it excited are fresh again within me, fresh 
as when on the outside of that well-known post- 
office, in that well-known Welsh iron- valley, I first 
opened and read it. Surprise was not confined, 
however, to the outside only ; for if, on turning tc 
the inside, gratification predominated, surprise still 
held its ground. What experience I had yet had of 
applications to the editors of magazines, had been 
all so different, that surprise, on this occasion, 
could hardly yield even to the gratification. 

The reader shall have it, this little note. It 
ran thus : — 

" January 24, West Lodge, Putney. 

" Sir, — I have the pleasure to inform you that 

your paper, the , will appear in the next 

number. Should you feel inclined to favour me 
with other papers, it would be desirable that I 



DOUGLAS JERROLD. 43 

should have them as early as possible in the 
month. — Yours faithfully, 

" Douglas Jerrold." 

This little note, with a few others from the 
same hand, I cherish with peculiar care ; not, I 
am sure, to the disapprobation of the reader. 

I had sent my article in the middle of January, 
and had expected no notice of my communication 
even in the February number. I had looked to 
the number for March as likely to contain the 
word of acceptance or rejection ; and here, before 
I had even seen the advertisement of the contents 
of the new number, was a polite acknowledgment 
of acceptance from the editor himself, and with 
an invitation to send more ! 

I had only twice the pleasure of seeing Douglas 
Jerrold; the first time, in May (I think) 1846; and 
the second time, in April 1847. On both occa- 
sions I found him in that pleasant residence on 
Putney Lower Common, which his son so well and 
so lovingly describes. On the first occasion, his 
first words to me were, ''Why, I had you in mind 
this very day;" and he proceeded to tell me of 
his newspaper, which he was then planning, and 
which made its debut in the following July. On 



44 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 

both, occasions he was as open, cordial, and unaf- 
fected as if it was an old friend he was receiving, and 
not a person comparatively unknown to him. He 
moved, talked, laughed in the most perfect sponta- 
neity of freedom. There was not a particle of 
the "snob" in him; not a breath of the lei air 
qui sapprend si vite, and of which some of his 
contemporaries — and even those who have dis- 
tinguished themselves the most by felicitous 
persiflage of said hel air — are yet signal examples. 
No; Douglas Jerrold was no "snob;" he was a 
child of nature, as free, and frank, and uncon- 
strained, and so as graceful as a child. He did 
not seem, as some do, to mutter "gentleman" 
to himself, and stiffen himself up into the due 
attitude and aspect. He seemed never to think 
of being a gentleman, never to try to be a gentle- 
man, and yet — though it cannot be said, perhaps, 
that he had all that delicacy of feeling that results 
only from that equality of respect for others and 
respect for one's-self which only the true gentle- 
man possesses in sweet equilibrium within him — 
he can be very warrantably named, gentleman. 
It is to be considered, also, that these two species 
of respect, thus in calm neutrality of union, but 
with graceful oscillation now to this side and now 



DOUGLAS JEKKOLD. 45 

to that, hardly finds a favourable bed in the breast 
of a literary man ; for a literary man generally 
feels himself all too specially an ego, a particular 
and peculiar "I/' and dreams ever of his own 
proper mission, to the disparagement frequently 
of that of all others. 

But be this as it may, there was not a pin's 
point of affectation in Douglas Jerrold : he was 
natural, simple, open as a boy. He chatted away, 
on the occasion T speak of, in the liveliest man- 
ner, gaily, frankly, unconstrainedly, and made no 
secret either of his thoughts and opinions, or of 
his predilections and antipathies. And I must 
not forget to add — for I have heard of accusations 
against him in this respect — that the first time I 
called, he wrote out, quite unasked, and even as 
he chatted, a cheque, as compensation for two or 
three articles I had sent him. He gave me, also, 
a copy of " Clovernook," showing me, with some 
pride, a translation of it in German, and express- 
ing the decided opinion that it was his best work. 

During both visits, passages in his own history 
were as freely communicated as descriptions, 
anecdotes, and personal traits of his contempo- 
raries. "We talked of Carlyle : he could not say 
he liked his style, but he honoured him, for he 



46 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 

was a man thoroughly in earnest, and had at heart 
every word he wrote. Did Carlyle come out 
among them ? Yes : he was not quite an anchor- 
ite. He had met him at Bulwer's. They had 
talked of Tawell (the murderer of the day). He 
(Jerrold) had said something about the absurdity 
of capital punishments. Carlyle had burst out : 
" The wretch ! (Tawell) I would have had him 
trampled to pieces under foot and buried on the 
spot !" " But I (Jerrold) said, ^ Cui bono — cui 
honoV This little anecdote made quite an im- 
pression on me. As Jerrold related it, his eye 
seemed to see again the whole scene ; his features 
assumed the look they must have worn, and his 
voice the tone it must have possessed on the oc- 
casion ; and he seemed again to be holding his 
breath, as if again taken suddenly by surprise. 
To me, too, the whole scene flashed up vividly : 
the vehement Carlyle, all in fuliginous flame, and 
the deprecating " Cui bono V of the astounded, not 
then vehement Jerrold ; the stronger, broader 
conflagration appalling the weaker and narrower. 
The house at Putney seemed just the house a 
literary man would choose. It lay there on the 
very hem of the green common, apparently, to me, 
the very utmost house of the very utmost suburb 



DOUGLAS JERROLD. 47 

of London. The study into which you entered 
almost directly from a very comfortable sitting- 
room, was itself a most comfortable apartment, 
well sized, well lit, well furnished, and the walls 
well covered with books. 

Jerrold surprised me by the exceeding short- 
ness of his stature, which was aggravated also 
by a considerable stoop. I do not think he could 
have stood much over five feet. He was not 
thin, meagre, or fragile to my eye however. His 
foot seemed a good stout, stubby foot, the hand 
not particularly small ; and he had quite a 
stout appearance across the chest. Then the 
face was not a small one : he had a particular 
broad look across the jaw, partly owing, probably, 
to the complete absence of whisker. The upper 
lip was long, but the mouth remarkably well 
formed ; flexible, expressive, moving in time to 
every thought and feeling. I fancied it could be 
sulky, and very sulky too. But I said as much 
when I described his character as Scotch : for 
what Scotchman — ourselves inclusive — is not 
sulky ? His nose was aquiline and hien accus^. 
His blue eyes, navf as violets, but quick as light, 
took quite a peculiar character from the bushy 
eyebrows that overhung them. Then the fore- 



48 DOUGLAS JEEEOLD. 

head, well relieved by the masses of brown hair 
carelessly flung back, was that of genius — smooth, 
and round, and delicate, and moderately high ; for 
gigantic brows, colossal fronts, are the perquisites 
only of milkmen and greengrocers. 

Altogether, the stature excepted, Jerrold's phy- 
sique was such as any man might be proud of, 
and corresponded very admirably to the rapid, 
frank, free soul that worked within it. He was 
closely, smoothly shaved, and showed not a vestige 
of whisker. He was well, and even, I thought, 
carefully clothed; his linen scrupulously clean, 
and the trousers strapped quite trimly down on 
the patent-leather boot. 

The second time I visited him he was kind 
enough to drive us (an American with weak eyes 
had dropped in) up to town. During the ride he 
was particularly chatty and agreeable. He told 
us of " Black-eyed Susan'' and Elliston ; of his 
early marriage and difficulties. We had the 
anecdote of the French surgeon at Boulogne, who 
insulted his rheumatic agonies with " Ce riest rien" 
and got his retort in return. We had erudite 
discourses on wines, and descriptions of pleasant 
places to live in. He told us his age. He talked 
of the clubs. He named his salary from Punch 



DOUGLAS JERKOLD. 49 

He related the history of that publication, and 
revealed the authors. He pointed out which 
articles were his, which Thackeray's, and which 
Tom Taylor's. He spoke of Percival Leigh. We 
heard of Clarkson Stanfield, and Jerrold's own 
experiences as middy. He chatted of Dickens, 
Thackeray, Leigh Hunt, Tom Taylor, and Albert 
Smith. Of all he spoke frankly, but discrimin- 
atively, and without a trace of malice or ill-nature. 
In answer to the inquiry, " What like was Thack- 
eray ?" he said : " He's just a big fellow with a 
broken nose, and, though I meet him weekly at 
the Punch dinner, I don't know him so well as I 
know you." Dickens he mentioned with the 
greatest affection ; and the articles of Thackeray 
and Tom Taylor were praised in the most ungrudg- 
ing fashion. No doubt Jerrold's feelings were 
quick and his expressions hasty; no doubt he 
could say bitter things and savage things ; but 
still I believe his nature to have been too loyal 
to admit either of envy or jealousy. 

And so we came to Trafalgar Square ; and there 
we parted. And I see him now as I saw him 
then, when he turned his back and climbed the 
stairs of the Eoyal Academy. I did not think 
then it was the last time I should see him. I did 
not think then that, one day reading the Times 

D 



50 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 

newspaper in^the Museum Club of Heidelberg — 
the window open, and bright in the intense sun- 
shine the mountain opposite — ^the tidings of his 
death would come on me with a shock. I did 
not think then that, returning from a six years' 
sojourn on the Continent, one of the first places I 
should visit in England would be Norwood Ceme- 
tery, to seek out there the grave of him who had 
once been kind to me, and to find it only by a 
reference to that of Laman Blanchard. (For in 
the September that followed his death I could see 
no memorial of the earth that held " so dear a 
head.") But so it was fated. And so, calling up 
again the short figure, and the bowed neck, and 
the face so swift and eager that the hair blew back 
— thinking again of the free, sailor-like nature 
that despised convention and detested cant, of the 
sensitive heart, of the liberal hand, of the simple, 
loyal impulse that made his movement straight 
— I fling this, my flower of grateful recollection, 
on his grave, and cry, Farewell ! Brave, frank, 
impulsive, generous Douglas Jerrold, farewell ! 
Thou surely, if any man, didst thrill to the poet, 
when he called — 

" Ring out the want, the care, the sin, 
The faithless coldness of the times ; 
Ring out the feud of rich and poor, 
Ring in redress to all mankind." 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 

To that elemental and essential poetry, the 
ideal of which both poets and critics of poets 
must, as their own sacred fire, entertain within 
them, few men have ever clomb nearer thar 
Alfred Tennyson. The reedy outskirts of the 
Muses' haunt are not nigh enough for him ; he 
must attain to their great presence, he must 
penetrate into the very lustre of their own inmost 
sanctuary, returning to us, like the priest from 
behind the veil, transfigured, luminous. With 
him, image, emotion, music, which are as the 
three colours in the rainbow of the poet's thought, 
lucidly collapsing, orb into song that, heaving, lifts 
us too on the proud wave of its own rhythmic 
movement. Minstrels we have had, grander, 
" fuller," perhaps, than he ; souls of a larger reach, 
hearts of a mightier pulse, but never a poet richer, 
never a poet truer. Finer gold, art more delicate, 
are nowhere else procurable ; and the result is so 



52 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

consummate, that clumsy fingers seek in vain to 
grasp it. It is a shell most exquisitely white, 
filling to the lustre of a most golden sea ; such a 
shell as the poet himself found on the Breton 
coast ; " made so fairily well, a miracle of design ; 
frail, but of force to withstand, year upon year, 
the shock of cataract-seas." 

The clumsy fingers that seek in vain to grasp 
it would petulantly crush it ; — for coarse are the 
majority of the criticisms that we have seen of 
this most genuine poet. Dull redactors trans- 
mute his delicious melodies, his most delicate 
and divine simplicities, into their own pasteboard 
prose, and then cry out, '' Look at it ! Do you 
call that poetry?" The divinest gift of God, the 
most beautiful and loveliest of the skiey messen- 
gers vouchsafed us now, has been rated like a 
schoolboy that had stolen apples, before the desk of 
some tumid editor, who knows only the heaviest 
scale, making there too a mistake so egregious 
that the dim thought of it will haunt him. 

Ah yes ! this delicate loveliness has borne the 
shock of uglier monsters than the " cataract- 
seas ;" slippery creatures have slid over it, and 
mere organic slime — that can but sting — has 
sought to hide it from the sun. But " now has 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 53 

descended a serener hour," and in the great choir 
of voices that proclaim their joy over it, the sneers 
of envy and the ineptitudes of incapacity are 
alike unheard. 

Poetry, of late, presents itself, for the most 
part, in affiliated series. Wordsworth, Southey, 
Coleridge, to go no higher, come in a group from 
the Percy Ballads, Burns, and Cowper. Shelley 
affiliates himself to Coleridge, Keats to Shelley, 
and Tennyson to Keats. Three is the sacred 
number, the fundamental figure, the foot that scans 
the rhythmus of the universe. Omne trinum per- 
fedum rotundum ; all good things are three ; and 
poets, as among the best, are no exception. But 
of all poetic triads, the last surely is the richest, 
the happiest, and the completest. Shelley, Keats, 
and Tennyson ! No, not even in their own verses 
can we find a more harmonious and triumphant 
triplet. They are the Three Graces of English 
literature — our trinal Catullus — and should never 
be found apart. They should be bound in a 
volume, whose very title — Shelley, Keats, and 
Tennyson — were poetry. 

"What!'' we hear the commoner critics cry, 
" do you dare to rank among dead and accepted 
classics, a mere living aspirant?" Not only that^ 



54 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

but we dare to say that this living aspirant/ as 
the ripest of the triad, must take precedence of 
these, his otherwise equal fellows. As completed 
bard indeed, and in consideration (with special 
reference to Wordsworth) of the richer humanity 
and wider universality of his range, Tennyson, 
perhaps, transcends the whole, series of poets that 
separates him from Milton. 

And if this be true, why should it not be said ? 
Or why should it be said to the dead skull only, 
and not to the living face of him it touches ? 
" Eight well know I that fame is half dis-fame," 
so speaks the melancholy bard himself; why 
should we not soothe him by a word in season ? 
Does not he do as much, and more, by us ? If 
he feels that he " walks with his head in a cloud 
of poisonous flies,'' shall we not seek to disperse 
tlie insects ? Shall we not seek, so far at least as a 
little willing shout may go, to drive off from him, 
if only for a moment, '' the long-necked geese of 
the world that are ever hissing dispraise ?" 

That we should recognise no greatness but dead 
greatness! and that we can never see the real 
height of a man so long as he stands five feet 
so-and-so at our elbow ! In the poet's own 
words, we "judge all nature from her feet of clay. 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 55 

without the will to lift our eyes and see her god- 
like head, crowned with spiritual fire, and touch- 
ing other worlds/' "When shall an uncalculating 
generosity return among us ? When shall we 
embrace the beautiful, whencesoever it may come, 
and without let, without grudge, without reserva- 
tion, call and cry and name it beautiful ? Must 
only dulness have the benefit of praise ? Must 
each new triumph of our fellow but freeze us into 
polite indiflPerence that withholds its voice from 
him, or convert us into an obstructive wall that 
would balk his hearing, even of the plaudits 
from without ? Was it only " at first starting," 
according to Charles Eeade, " that Christians and 
artists loved each other ?" This world is indeed 
mean; and in regard to many another besides 
Merlin, because " he seems master of all art, it 
fain would make him master of all vice." 

This meanness Tennyson, as much as any man 
that breathes, has known and seen and suffered. 
But he is brave withal, and will not cast himself 
beneath it: "never yet," he cries, "was noble 
man but made ignoble talk ; he makes no friend 
who never made a foe !" In his own work, in- 
deed, he has had his own ample consolation, his 
own most rich reward. He that has filed so well 



56 ALFRED i'ENNYSON. 

such vast variety of measures, from " Claribel " 
to " Guinevere " has had no dull time of it. He 
who wooed and won " The Miller's Daughter ;" 
who scorned "the Lady Clara Vere de Vere ;" 
who thrid the awe-hushed palace to the couch of 
''Beauty;'' who listened to "the Stylite," and 
who heard the deep voice of " Ulysses' " self; he 
that said of " Lady Clare," " Oh, and proudly 
stood she up ;" he that saw " Godiva," " as he 
waited for the train at Coventry :" that dwelt for 
years, an embowered nightingale, within the wail 
of " In Memoriam ;" that sang " The Princess ;" 
and that chanted " Maud ;" that looked into " the 
meek blue eyes of Enid," " the truest eyes that 
ever answered heaven ;" he that has been privi- 
leged to gather and to grow in stature and in 
shape before " the clear face of the blameless 
King," — enough ! — let " the common cry of curs " 
deafen all the air — of living men, here surely is 
the crowned happiest ! He surely, if any man, 
may dwell in a serene unreachable of all " whose 
low desire not to feel lowest, makes them level 
all, and pare the mountain to the plain, to leave 
an equal baseness." 

We have said that Tennyson, as ripest, must 
take precedence both of Keats and Shelley ; but 



ALFRED TENNYSON, 57 

we abase neither of these without a grudge. We 
know what they are without him, but not what 
he would have been without them. Both died so 
young too; Shelley at thirty, Keats at twenty- 
four. Had Tennyson's mortal sojourn been as 
short, is it probable that he would have inherited 
an equal fame? "With him luckily, however — 
luckily for us — all has gone differently. They, 
though young, had done their work not badly, 
and they died ; while he, who needed, and who 
needing, got, the southern slope-lands and the 
evening-red, has grown and ripened to the yellow 
and the heavy ear. 

Yes, doubtless ; Tennyson owes no light debt 
to Keats and Shelley ; nor indeed, are his obliga- 
tions lighter to others of his predecessors. Not 
alone the splendour and the purity of Shelley, or 
the mellow notes of Keats, but Wordsworth's 
severe simplicity, Milton's divine abundance, 
Spenser's rich tenderness, these also, absorbed 
and assimilated, turn up like colours in the lus- 
trous verse of Tennyson. Let us not be unjust 
to this last, however, because of his place in 
time. Who is it that has not had predecessors ? 
Successive sequence holds of the very quality of 
the finite ; and it is not right that we should im- 



58 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

pute it singly to any man. Homer himself, first 
lark that ever sang, would have raised an infin- 
itely thinner note, had not echoes from still 
earlier '' makers '' combiningly enriched it. We 
have only to look back upon our earliest ballads, 
charming as they are, to become aware of how 
much the metal of poesy gains in firmness, den- 
sity, weight, and shape, under the successive 
hammers of a thousand workmen. And it is in 
the light of these thoughts that Tennyson must 
be looked at ; for the reproach of imitation is not 
by any means legitimately his. From first to 
last, from " Claribel " to " Guinevere," in '' Locks- 
ley HaU," " Godiva," '' Lady Clare ;'' in the Ode 
to the Duke of Wellington, in '* Ulysses," in 
'' The Stylite,'' in " Maud," " The Princess," " In 
Memoriam," the " Idylls," it is neither Spenser 
nor Milton, neither Wordsworth nor Shelley nor 
Keats ; it is Tennyson himself we see, " Not Lan- 
celot, nor another." 

Still it is probable that the mastery of the craft 
has proved much more laborious to Tennyson 
than to either of his co-mates. It is not certain, 
indeed, that he has yet attained to those conse- 
cutive and uninterrupted numbers, to that grow- 
ing, flowing, and accumulating verse for which 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 59 

both Keats and Shelley — and in the greater degree 
the latter — are so remarkable. We refer not here 
to the narrative, which in Tennyson runs on ever 
with infinite grace of consecution, but to the 
metres and their peculiar sequence. Eead " Hype- 
rion," " Alastor," " Comus ;" one feels a certain 
swell, a certain continuous rising in the mere 
verse ; the numbers are welded, they grow, flow, 
and accumulate. But one can hardly say as 
much, and in the same sense, for " The Princess." 
We get sight in this poem of a certain chequered- 
ness rather; the oneness, the fusion of an im- 
provised, extempore gush is rare in it ; the hand 
of conscious elaboration seems to linger about it ; 
one finds turns in it, the artificial quaintness of 
which rings with rhetoric. There is often a pecu- 
liar insertedness, indicative as it were, of the very 
process by which those "jewels, five-words-long, 
that on the stretch'd forefinger of all time, sparkle 
for ever," were actually inlaid. There seems a 
certain impededness in the movement, a mincing- 
ness, a pretty mincingness, as if the feet were 
fettered — perhaps, like a sultana's, by ornament 
— to a certain reach. In short, to borrow words 
from the metaphysical category of Quantity, the 
orbit of Tennyson is a disci^etum rather than a 



60 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

continuum ; the circle may, on the whole, be full, 
but it has been described, as it were, in a series 
of interrupted dots, and not in a single, fluent, 
unintermitted sweep. The regularity of the dots 
is hardly constant either: they are not always 
true to the curve, but look oblique ; nor are they, 
in equal spaces, always equally numerous. If 
Keats, if Shelley, and, better still, if Milton, " with 
his garland and his singing robes about him," rise 
into the empyrean, sustained on one long gust of 
melody, Tennyson may be said to attain like re- 
gions as by a ladder of Jacob, the rounds of which 
are of celestial workmanship, but not the less 
rounds. The peculiarity alluded to is seen at its 
fullest, perhaps, in " The Princess," where, indeed, 
the express prettiness proper to an arabesque has 
raised it into accentuated prominence. Its source 
is undoubtedly the fastidious labour of the bard : 
our enjoyment of the poem is undisturbed, how- 
ever, and any sense of labour that may linger in 
our ear disappears in the flow of the narrative. 
Thorough study, in truth, might educe important 
results here; for Tennyson's very latest blank 
verse, though quite unobstructed whether by 
prettiness or the insertion of some too irresistible 
epithet, displays a similar peculiarity ; and it is 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 61 

worth iiaquiry how far is it a conscious, how far 
is it an unconscious product ? Perhaps, indeed, 
the discretum may have this advantage over the 
continuum, that it does not so soon cloy; for 
where are there poems in any literature that can 
be read with a less flagging interest than these 
" Mauds," " Princesses," and " Idylls " ? 

We leave here this inquiry, however, and re - 
turn to our main interest. 

The Idyll, or Idyl — for both spellings occur in 
these very poems, the one attaching itself to the 
Greek dSvXXiov and the latter to the Latin Idylium 
(sometimes Idyllium, however,) — is, on the whole, 
Tennyson's favourite form of rhythmical composi- 
tion. In this predilection he is not alone how- 
ever : the Idyll is the favourite form of Keats 
also, to whom Tennyson directly affihates himseK ; 
and not only of Keats, but of the national poetry 
in general Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Cowper, 
Wordsworth — to name but these — are all emin- 
ently idyllic. The Idyll, indeed, is our national 
ideal A discriminative French writer remarks of 
our English scenery, " Eien de plus attendrissant 
que les paysages Anglais/' Perhaps, then, it is 
these landscapes that touch us ; for it is certain 
that we are not more remarkable for our factitious 



62 ALFEED TENNYSON. 

conventionalism than for our yearning towards 
the unsophisticated. We toil and moil through 
life in a thousand unsightly avenues — trade, com- 
merce, profession, oflftce, position — but at the end 
of each there smiles for us an Idyll : home, 
the country, trees, fields, and running waters, a 
purer life with simpler manners and a ruddier 
health. The national poetry takes the national 
stamp ; and in this respect, the compositions of 
Tennyson exhibit a deeper impression, perhaps, 
than those of any other of our poets. The best 
of his miscellaneous poems are inscribed, " English 
Idyls ; " and now his latest and most finished 
work he names, *' Idylls of the King." With such 
authority before us, we may venture to extend the 
word to " Maud " and " The Princess" also ; and 
in that case, Tennyson's poems will be seen to be 
all — or all but all — Idylls. 

According to some critics, however, the word 
relates to the common, and is misapplied to kings 
and princesses. We do not see the validity of 
the objection : it is not certain that poetry relates 
to the common in the ordinary sense at aU, and 
it is quite certain that the essence of the Idyll is, 
that it should be a little picture-poem with nature 
in the background, and in the foreground meii 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 63 

and women of primitive and simple nobleness. 
In the sense of this definition, it will be evident 
to every reader that the term is admirably appro- 
priate to the poems before us ; and an examina- 
tion of these poems themselves will abundantly 
demonstrate the legitimacy of their claim to an 
equality of place beside the very highest of the 
class. 

These poems range over a period of some thirty 
years, and present, as might be expected, a series 
of gradations from the crudity of poetic youth to 
the full maturity of poetic manhood. The poet, 
one would think, however, must have largely 
burned his juvenilia, or, at all events, hav^ subse- 
quently re- worked and reformed them with un- 
usual diligence and success, for there are but few 
poems in his collections that can be considered 
representative of the earliest stages of the art. 
Even " Claribel," we fancy, has been left to show 
the point of departure only — just as we see in 
cuttings, detached round mounds left standing, 
useless surely unless to indicate the original sur- 
face. The progressive rise from such mere callow 
sparrow-cheep as *' mavis dwelleth," " wave out- 
welleth," " throstle lispeth," " runnel crispeth," 
" grot replieth," etc., to that most grand and in- 



64 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

spired strain that closes " The Princess," or to 
that other, grander, perhaps, and more inspired, 
that is the climax of " Guinevere " — this pro- 
gressive rise, as conceived between such extremes, 
is even infinite. " Claribel " is almost alone, 
however, and there is scarcely another poem 
among them all on so low a leveL 

Be the cause where it may, fire or correction, 
the crudities natural to young poets have, as re- 
gards these poems, been pretty well effaced, and 
the general negative of Tennyson must be named 
a small one. It is, in short, the negative of youth 
in general; which consists, as we all know, in a 
preponderance of form over matter, and in a con- 
sequent exaggeration and distortion of the form. 
To make up for substantial deficiency, there is an 
unsparing use of the mere organ. With will 
enough and effort enough, there is a vastly dispro- 
portionate result ; for it is futile to rattle the loom 
if the shuttle be empty and the warp unbeamed. 
There is a constant straining at originality in 
image, verse, and measure, that terminates in af- 
fectation only. We have reminiscences of the 
library rather than reflexes of fact. The imagery 
seems external : it is traditional and not original. 
Blooms, shoots, winds, dews, roses, lilies, gold, and 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 65 

silver, are re-distributed simply as they have been 
received, and with as little difJ&culty. Examples 
of this negative we think we see in several of the 
earliest poems, as in "Claribel," " The Owl,'' " The 
Sea-Fairies, " The Poet," ^' The Ode to Memory," 
'' The Dying Swan," " The Goose," etc. In " A 
Character," the poet, perhaps, rather endeavours 
than succeeds to get words for what he sees — the 
cold dilettante, the mere amateur, namely ; and we 
do not altogether except from a general imputation 
of the negative even such poems as " Mariana," 
"The EecoUections of the Arabian Mghts," and 
" The Lady of Shalott." These are doubtless meant 
to be very weird and wonderful, but they are mere 
breath, and, despite their verbal music, are as bar- 
ren as the wind. The figures are invisible in their 
own vague splendour : the cup is too luscious ; we 
are surfeited with sweets, and would fain pass it. 
Experience, in fact, is as yet not ripe enough to give 
either solid substance or precise shape to the mere 
dreams of the youth of genius, who accordingly 
wastes himself in the bare formality of his art. 

But let us leave the faults and seek the ex- 
cellences : let us abandon the cold emptiness 
of the negative for the warm fulness of the 
affirmative. Let us select for review — a review 



I 



66 ALFKED TENNYSON. 

that our limits will not permit to exceed a 
very fugitive glance — a few of the most noted 
of these Idylls. 

Almost all of them are named from and group 
themselves around females. As a true poet, Tenny- 
son is conscious of his own double nature ; and 
his purer half, his sister, has ever an indefinable 
charm for him. Throughout all his poems, female 
characterization is the leading interest, and touches 
the daintiest, the subtlest, and the nicest every- 
where abound. 

What a charm of natural grace there is in 
"Lilian!" what a simple sweet archness ! " Smil- 
ing, never speaking, looking through and through 
us, thoroughly to undo us," we see her bodily. The 
whole charming, natural little scene springs up 
freshly to our eyes. We feel actually present, we 
see it all, we enjoy quite as much as the actors 
themselves the sly and quiet preparation, and 
then the sudden accomplishment, of the seizure 
of the little lady. We positively feel the " crush- 
ing" of her. Then the physical music, and the 
adaptation of physical sound generally to sense 
and subject : in such qualities Tennyson is a fin- 
ished master. There is a little poem of this kind 
which we recollect to have read ten years ago, and 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 67 

which we miss from the edition before us. 
It is ''The Skipping-rope/' as regards internal 
thought valueless, but invaluable as a wreath 
of words that conveyed to the very eye a series 
of interchanging physical motions. We could 
have better spared " Claribel" than " The Skip- 
ping-rope." 

This, which we have just indicated, is of course 
only one of the smaller adjuncts and adjuvants 
of poetry : such as it is, it is a true one however, 
and Tennyson, perhaps of all poets, knows best its 
use. Tennyson, in truth, is not only a born poet, 
but he is a complete artist. He is master of the 
trade, and at home with every tool of it. From 
assonance and alliteration up to the Pythian tone 
of rapture itself, no secret fails him. Foot and 
pause and rhyme and rhythm, are all his creatures, 
and docile to his will. He knows what rich vir- 
tue, what strange influence may flow from an old 
word, or a new word, or a word used for the occa- 
sion in its stricter and more directly derivative 
sense. He knows, too, how the mere position of 
words, single or in clusters, produces those sud- 
den pulsings of physical melody — yea, of essential 
poetry — that come upon the tuned instrument 
within us, like the sudden perfume of some un- 



68 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

noticed sweetbrier which arrests us with the 
charm of its unexpected deliciousness. An ab- 
solute power of expression dwells in these poems 
in its every form indeed, and "the fitting of apt- 
est words to things" transacts itself unceasingly. 
Terms and phrases there are, the subtlest, the 
cunningest, the most penetrative and incisive, 
that touch the very quick of the truth — that 
reach to the inner inmost — that dragout the pal- 
pitating thought itself to the light, and no mere 
piecemeal husk of it. Tennyson, in short, pos- 
sesses in its totality that inner melody by virtue 
of which is hardship his, and he knows every 
touch and turn that gives it egress, direction, 
modulation. 

" Lilian" is followed by '' Isabel" — a beautiful 
ideal of complete and placid wifehood. " Her 
eyes are not down-dropt, nor over-bright, but fed 
with the clear-pointed flame of chastity." " The 
laws of marriage are charactered in gold upon 
the blanched tablets of her heart." " Upon her 
lips there reigns the summer-calm of charity." 
" She has a prudence to withhold, a hate of gossip- 
parlance and of sway." These traits are perfect 
and unmistakable, and do indeed give us " a form 
of finished chastened purity." "Madeline" and 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 69 

"Adeline" are, as characterizations, equally suc- 
cessful ; and there is fine music in several other 
poems of the date 1830. "Love and Death" 
indeed is quite startling in its finish, and one is 
tempted to surmise that it must have slipt in 
from some later period. 

The poems of the second division, 1832, improve 
greatly on those of the first, and are mostly flights 
indicative of a stronger pinion. " Oenone," though 
remarkable for classic depth and purity, has not 
received the attention she deserves. " Lady Clara 
Vere de Vere" is an exceedingly felicitous and 
effective little piece. The high-born flirt would, 
for mere pastime, make an insulting conquest of 
the poet ; but to his lucid vision her inner worth- 
lessness is all apparent, and to his simple dignity 
"the daughter of a hundred earls is one not to be 
desired.'' His pride, too, is as characteristic as the 
lady's own : " he knows she is proud to bear her 
name, but yet her pride is no match for his, for 
he is too proud to care from whence he came." 
The haughty coquette, he is quite determined, 
shall not " fix a vacant stare and slay him with 
her noble birth." He tells her pleasantly that 
" the grand old gardener and his wife laugh at 
the claims of long descent," " that to him a simple 



70 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

maiden in her flower is worth a hundred coats of 
arms/' and, 

'* Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 
'Tis only noble to be good : 
Kind hearts are more than coronets, 
And simple faith than Norman blood." 

The sort of democratic aristocracy here is parti- 
cularly fine : it is expressed without envy or any 
base heat ; there is not a trace of vulgarity in it. 
Here are only the simplicity and the quietude of 
the fitting self-respect. "We are reminded here of 
the gigantic phrase of Burns, " that he brings his 
patent of nobility direct from Almighty God ;" 
and we are pleased that Tennyson, cherishing a 
like conviction, should express it with so much 
tranquillity of unpretending assurance. Such 
things please all — ploughman and parvenu, sub- 
ject and sovereign — for they touch the eternal 
dignity of man as man — a height higher yet than 
that of king or kaiser. 

Among the poems of 1832 we have the tale 
of the sweet, true wife that Alice, '' the Miller s 
daughter,'' made. This is a genuine Idyll, and 
overpoweringly touching. We know no more per- 
fect poem of a like size in the language. As a 
tale of love, it breathes at once a tenderness and 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 71 

a truth of passion that can be paralleled nowhere 
out of any other author. It is a rounded little 
whole, and there is the charm in it of a pictur- 
esque reality that seems stolen from the very 
person of Nature herself. It exhibits in music, 
word, thought, and story, a perfection so chaste 
and pure that it is conceivable only to him who 
has read it. Fain would we quote — fain hang a 
long, long time yet over this perfect mirror of 
sweet love and true poesy — but our limits forbid. 
In the same division, "The Lotus-eaters" is 
also an exceedingly successful little poem. The 
dreamy haze of the dreamy, enchanted land is 
transferred to the verse, and the numbers lift 
their feet as lusciously slothful as the hours 
themselves in that overpowering climate. What 
pictures spread themselves in single lines : 



or. 



" They sat tliem down upon the yellow sand, 
Between the sun a.nd moon upon the shore ;" 

" To dream and dream like yonder amber light, 
Which will not leave the m3rrrh-bush on the height !" 



Besides the mere charms of verse, there is 
throughout the poem a fine spirit of human re- 
flection. The whole scepticism of the day (how 
perfectly Tennyson can endue what state of mind 



72 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

he pleases !) comes to richest speech here : no 
stanza but is a symbol of satiety ; no word but 
breathes itself out languidly as if utterly used up ; 
and every line is glutted weariness. 

As the poems of 1832 rise on those of 1830, so 
do those of 1842 rise upon their predecessors. 
Still the best of each division must be understood 
as coming together in the end to constitute a sort 
of upper house of peers. The tendency to the 
Idyll comes here more plainly to the surface : as 
we have already remarked, indeed, this division 
is even named '' English Idyls." It is now that 
a most careful study of Wordsworth makes itself 
prominent. " The Excursion,'' and pastorals like 
" Michael," and " The Brothers," must have now 
attracted to themselves the nights and days of 
the young Tennyson. Such poems as " Audley 
Court," '' Dora," '' Walking to the Mail," "Edwin 
Morris," " The Gardener's Daughter," etc., are 
manifestly mere pleasant exercises of the poet in 
his art. The best of them, such as the last men- 
tioned, are graceful pictures of flowers, fruits, and 
trees, alive with beauty and eloquent with love — 
love the richest, chastest, purest. Everywhere 
there are charming conceits and the daintiest 
turns. Still we cannot fail to see a certain 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 73 

straining, a certain stiffness, a certain elaborate- 
ness as of an essay or an exercise ; and some time 
after we have read them, they present themselves 
to our memory as but selected college copy-books, 
creditable in their series. 

It is otherwise, however, with "The Morte 
d'Arthur," " St. Simeon Stylites,'' " Ulysses," 
'' Godiva," " The Two Voices," " Locksley Hall," 
"The Day-dream," "Lady Clare," etc., all of 
which are to be ranked among the most perfect 
poems we possess. In " Love and Duty," " The 
Golden Year," "The Vision of Sin," " Amphion," 
" The Talking Oak," etc., there are quotable gems 
of rarest lustre, fascinatingly rich with love, 
phantasy, and wisdom — ripe poesy, indeed, fuU- 
tongued if curious-tongued. 

Let us remind the reader of " The Day-dream," 
of "The Prologue," "The Sleeping Palace," "The 
Sleeping Beauty," " The Arrival," " The Eevival," 
" The Departure," " The Moral," " L'Envoi," " The 
Epilogue." The poet himself tells us that " soft 
lustre bathes the range of urns ;" but are not these 
a range of urns — golden all — upon a palace-marble 
— bathed in lustre surely from the spheres ? What 
simple felicity of speech is this ! What triumphant 
utterance to the most delicate fancies, the richest 



74 ALFIIED TENNYSOIir. 

imaginations ! What delicious music ! What 
most voluptuous sound ! It is indeed a fairy 
palace — urns, lawns, parrot, peacock, page, butler, 
steward, king — fairy, tranced, but alive and human 
— alive and human, though under the crystal 
settings and amid the rainbow deckings of the 
very warmest and subtlest of poets ! 

Then Lady Clare ! " Oh, and proudly stood she 
up !" — is it not the ballad of ballads ? What pri- 
vilege to be able to read such tendernesses, such 
noblenesses, to those we love, and to see their 
tiheeks flush and their eyelashes glitter as we 
know our own do ! Then " Locksley Hall ! " 
How beautiful this love ! How passion has grown 
and strengthened with the poet, and he has clomb 
to his majority ! How all external helps and aids 
drop from him, and he stands forward on his own 
strength ! The botany and ornithology of books 
have ceased, and those of nature have begun. He 
lives in his own heart now — in his own soul, and, 
living there, he must see with his own eyes, hear 
with his own ears, and speak with his own lips. 
Every line becomes a quotation : not one but 
might be a saw deep-sculpt upon a temple's 
front. All here is high, noble-hearted, generous, 
and unselfish ; the love, the wisdom of the dove 



ALFKED TENNYSON. 75 

that scorns, that pities the serpent of the world. 
Let him who wonld regain the uncorrupted 
freshness, the unsoiled purity of his prime, read 
"Locksley HaU!" 

" The Two Voices " is also a noble poem, and 
we see in it one of the purest spirits of the age, 
wrestling with those grand and awful speculations 
that all time presses on us, but never any time 
more than the present. In this poem, and in 
" Locksley Hall," indeed (in " The Lotus-eaters," 
the element in question was more an affair of re- 
productive art), are the first murmurs of those sad 
questionings, which attain their full completeness 
of articulation in " In Memoriam." The poet is 
as yet young, however ; his muscles are elastic, 
and his heart is fresh ; nature is still glad and 
glorious around him; and the veil before humanity, 
— if it has fallen ragged here and there, revealing 
poverty and sin, — is yet thick enough elsewhere 
to conceal to hope a possible most joyous opulence. 
It is to be said too, that his pure, true, humble 
heart naturally reverts always to the only refuge 
that has efficacy to extend the healing of assur- 
ance. On the whole, we cannot help gathering 
from these poems a most pleasing picture of the 
young Tennyson, "nursing his youth sublime 



76 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

with the fairy tales of science and the long results 
of time/' We see him, like a knight, noble, 
chivalrous, and high, speaking ever a language so 
different from the slang of those unfortunate 
*'fast" men, that almost everywhere else now-a- 
days obtrudes like sin ; he, surely, is blameless of 
the wine -stains and the smut of clubs; nor has 
the flare of city midnights withered or made 

haggard him. But to resume 

What a very gem of art '' Godiva" is ! So 
pure it is — so chastely limned — upon a tablet 
white as snow ! No word but is the right one. 
No cut that is not sharp and true. How has he 
attained to this most perfect utterance ? How is 
it that at the end, it is only a wet eyelash or 
some half-articulated exclamation that can speak 
the enchanted lustre and the absorbing joy with 
which we have been filled and flooded? Why 
quote, reader ? Go, read it for yourself ! Eead, 
and find yourself, the dingy garments of the day 
all dropped from you, endued in a robe white as 
charity and soft as goodness. Such charm flows 
from the pure flush of this most true imagination. 
" St. Simeon Stylites" has always been a special 
favourite with us. There is in it an originality 
of conception as well as a completeness of execu- 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 77 

tion, that has always captivated us. To paint a 
sheep or a tree, the painter, we are told, becomes 
a sheep or a tree : with a like object, and in a 
like manner, Tennyson has made himself '^ The 
Stylite.'' He has transformed himseK into the 
lonely living statue on the narrow pillar in the 
Syrian waste. He has lived that outward life of 
heat and cold, of wet and dry, till now, stiff with 
aches and bowed with age, he is only half alive. 
Not less truly has he lived the inward life of this 
strange saint : he has converted his own conscious- 
ness into a dusky, hot, blind sense of sins, which 
he hardly understands, which he hardly believes 
in, but which prompt the most passionate cries. 
A dusky imagination he gives himself, firing up 
to thoughts of beatitude and the crowns of 
martyrdom. Feelings, too, of self-righteousness he 
acquires from the merits of his sufferings ; and a 
dusky, but most real vanity must mix itself with 
all, for below stand the people worshipping him, 
and proclaiming the miracles he has wrought upon 
them. The whole consciousness of the poet has 
become for the nonce a dusky, hot, blind, right- 
eous, self-righteous vanity. There is really here a 
very rare faculty of analytic conception ; and it is 
in union with a power of e:jtpression as sure as rare. 



Y8 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

" The Ulysses" is a strain even higher than 
" The Stylite/' and quite as singular and original. 
What a noble vision is not that of the old hero, 
who will not "rust unburnished/' but will " shine 
in use/' who will leave his kingdom to his mild 
Telemachus, and like a Viking in his burning 
bark, will die, sailing beyond the sunset and the 
paths of all the western stars ! How grandly he 
recounts that which he did and is ! His voice 
comes from the mighty prime, and enables us to 
understand what might have been "that large 
utterance of the earlier " demi-gods. The poem 
is a finished picture, original and true, and pure 
in simple power. 

Beautiful as Tennyson's miscellaneous poems 
are, one feels discontented, nevertheless, that they 
should be so short, so fragmentary, so disconnected. 
Should not this grand power, one is apt to think, 
have been nursed, and cherished, and fed in secret, 
till it had been equal to a very Atlas-orb of song? 
Thinking thus, however, we turn questioningly to 
the larger poems. 

On "Maud," we can linger as momentarily 
only as on her beautiful sisters that have pre- 
ceded her. This poem, it appears, has hardly 
succeeded in propitiating official criticasters. It 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 79 

is one, however, that will stand nninjnred mightier 
blasts than such weak breaths as theirs. It is a 
most complete, consistent little work, perfect in 
its rounding, perfect in its keeping, perfect in its 
details. Maud, " with her clear-cut face, faultily 
faultless," changing for us as she changes for her 
lover, grows upon us, and fills up into a woman 
charming and complete, whom w^e love with our 
whole love. The brother, *'that oil'd and curled 
Assyrian bull," is perfect in his place and perfect 
in his function. The incidents of the little drama 
open on us in an extremely felicitous manner, 
and the character of the moody solitary (with his 
ways of genius in a sulky temperament) that loves 
Maud, develops itself admirably. The poem 
abounds, moreover, in ripe reflection, in mature 
human wisdom, on the level of the day. The 
love in it is true and passionate, and gives birth 
to some of the most exulting and triumphant 
erotic strains that can be found in any literature. 
The poet ascends here and there into a fervour of 
passion unusual to him ; and, as regards intensity, 
*' Maud " is perhaps the intensest poem that 
Tennyson has ever written. There is indeed in 
it quite an oriental warmth of feeling and quite an 
oriental exuberance of music and imagery, and 



80 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

we hesitate not to pronounce it the finest love- 
chant — most truly is it a chant — in the whole 
compass of English literature. 

" The Brook " is a pleasant little triumph of 
art thrown off with the ease of the assured master. 
Kate Willows is but a glimpse into a picture, but 
it is a very delightful one. The ode to the Duke 
of Wellington, with its melody, its pathos, its 
grandeur, its majesty, and its incisive apprecia- 
tiveness of character, we only mention.-^ 

'' The Princess " is one of the noblest poems 
we have ever read ; it overflows with all the 
opulence of the guild; it possesses the deepest 
pathos, and again a sense of greatness, that lifts 
us to the heroic. ^ The play of fancy is exhaust- 
less, and the skill of the workman unexcelled. 
How from the prologue, with its wilful little 
Lilia, its demure maiden aunt, its high-spirited 
students, the travestied statue of Sir Ealph, the 



1 We may also mention now the beautiful poems of " Enoch 
Arden," and of '' Aylmer's Field," which have at least- extended 
the fame of their author. In the same volume ^' The Grand- 
mother," and the "Northern Farmer," are for our poet fresh 
victories, admirably executed portraits of genuine human analysis 
both. The " Alcaics" and the bit of the Iliad contrast Tennyson 
unfavourably, as was to be expected, with Milton and Homer : 
while, as was also to be expected, the imitation of Catullus is 
most deliciously and delightfully successful. 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 81 

bluff Sir Walter, the lady-knight that fought her 
foes, the institute, and " the nineteenth century 
on the grass," — how from all these, as from so 
many reels and bobbins, the magic threads wind 
off and spin themselves into this dream-like med- 
ley. The cracked old Gama himself hangs on by 
the prologue, and has his particular thread some- 
where — that we feel sure of — though we cannot 
exactly say where. But this poem has a purpose, 
and an important one ; and more light has been 
thrown by it on the question of the relative posi- 
tion of the sexes than by all the express articles 
ever written on the subject in book or newspaper. 
In this the poet has done good service to his own 
immediate days. So nobly, too, as the result is 
expressed ! Than the Prince's address to the 
subdued and softened Ida, what subtler strain 
of inspiration can we well find in any other 
bard? 

" The Idylls of the King," — in view of their 
length, of the unity that imparts symmetry and 
coherence to them, and of the calm, ripe power 
in which, as in an atmosphere, they live — are 
certainly the most important of all the Idylls. 
The introduction to " The Morte d' Arthur," in 
which we learn "he burnt his Epic, his King 

F 



82 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

Arthur, some twelve books," leaves us at no loss 
to know that we are here in presence of the poet's 
earliest love. Keats, sick of the meanness and 
mercenariness of modern life, fled to an ideal 
Greece ; and Tennyson, sick too, took refuge in 
the fairy land of Arthur and the Table Eound. 
To such a gentle soul as that of the young and 
as yet unknown Tennyson, we may readily con- 
ceive the dominant manners of his own days as 
all unsuited. From the vulgar indifference of the 
mere wealthy, as from the equally offensive in- 
difference of the mere well-born, what could he, 
with his credulity (as poet) of Godhead every- 
where, and his soul athirst for sympathy, — what 
could he but turn, chilled, repelled, indignant ? 
What dear delight to such a soul to flee from the 
jarring world of the present, and breathe its own 
natural air amid the nobleness and the knight- 
liness that floated palpably from the grapd person- 
ages of that land of Faery ! Then, like a true poet, 
he would not breathe this fine air selfishly, but 
he would open it to his fellows ; and so he mused 
and mused, and dreamed and dreamed, and for 
us, too, spread those lustrous lawns, and rain- 
bow woods, and golden palaces, filling them with 
shapes the stateliest and the best of generous 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 83 

poesy. What a healing lies in these grand phan- 
tasies for the sick time that glares around us ! 
What shapes of men and women, to shame us out 
of our vulgarity, impurity, and corruption ! 

In female characterization, we have already 
had occasion to remark the power of Tennyson ; 
but all previous triumphs in this kind are out- 
done by the present. The women of the " Idylls" 
are emphatically representative women. Elaine, 
though perhaps clearer, harder, and, so to speak, 
more simply single, may be looked on ae but a 
younger sister of Enid; but Enid, Vivien, and 
Guinevere are sharply defined, and each is typical 
of a class. 

Vivien were a truer Dame aux Camelias than 
that hectic nullity of French sentimentalism that 
originates the name. She is the true light woman, 
with all her wiles, and with aU her selfish shal- 
lowness. Eebuffed, detected, stale, " she hears in 
thought the lavish comments when her name is 
named, and hates the knights." No resource is 
left her but the aged Merlin, with his shaggy 
eyebrows and his shaggy beard. Him, then, she 
follows with her arts relentlessly, and all the 
more relentlessly that she knows him to possess 
a spell which, once hers, would restore to her 



84 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

will the power that had forsaken her charms. 
Of course, she succeeds, and she leaves the out- 
witted sage, shrieking out over him the just 
reproach of " fool." The poet has here ample 
canvas for his woman's lore, but the subject is 
unpleasant. The wise old Merlin, in such undig- 
nified positions, causes but pain ; and the image 
will not mitigate the fact that 

" The pale blood of the wizard, at her touch, 
Took gayer colours, like an opal warmed." 

What a contrast to the evil, hard, and shameless 
Vivien is the guileless, sweet, shamefaced Enid, 
the very type and model of a faithful, tender, and 
a loving spouse ! Her husband, the good, honest, 
frank, lusty Geraint, sullen from misapprehen- 
sion, puts her to a variety of trials, which the 
sweet soul bears with such unchangingness of 
obedience, that the reader is completely won to 
her. Some of the scenes are exquisitely beauti- 
ful, finely conceived, and skilfully executed. 

Guinevere is a character of a very different 
stamp from that of Enid. She is a queen, every 
inch of her, if a sinful one : she is also a woman, 
every thought and feeling of her, if, too, a sinful 
one. She is not the meek, and sweet, and gentle 
Enid, but still less is she the shallow, loose, and 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 85 

flaunting Vivien. She loved Lancelot, mistaking 
him, unfortunately, for Arthur, her affianced lord, 
before she had seen the latter ; and high, generous, 
and stately, she yet possesses not moral power 
enough to clasp her feelings to her duty. Yet, in 
her heart of hearts, there lurks the better woman ; 
and, in the end, her penitence and recognition of 
the worth of him she has injured are most noble 
and queenlike. 

The male characters in these fine tales are as 
successful as the female. So statelily they move 
in the simple knightliness that is their element \ 
" They step with all grace, and not with half dis- 
dain hid under grace, as in a smaller time, but 
kindly men moving with kindly men." What 
smaller time the poet means, the reader sees. 
Yes; politeness now-a-days is seldom more than 
"half disdain hid under grace/' Generally, in- 
deed, it is something infinitely worse than this : 
it is the affectation of a certain easy audacity, in 
which there is no ease nevertheless, but always 
the uneasy self-interrogation, " Have I hit it, 
think you V* Whatever it be, and whencesoever 
it be, we all know it. Tennyson has here accur- 
ately indicated it : he, indeed, knows it well — we 
remember he was "gorgonized by the stony 



86 ALFKED TENNYSON. 

Britisli stare of an oil'd and curled Assyrian bull " 
— and hates it. Whatever is genuine in the 
island hates it, and most fervently prays to be 
delivered from it. It is the mildew that sits 
withering up all our social existence now. It lay 
at the heart of the Indian mutiny perhaps, and 
it has certainly " gorgonized " the better part of 
Europe into hatred of us. How different were 
the manners of these men, these gentlemen ! 
'' They did not deal in scorn, but if a man were 
halt or hunched, scorn was allowed in him as part 
of his defect, and he was answered softly by the 
King and all his Table, — or from exceeding man- 
fulness and pure nobility of temperament, they 
refrained from even a word.'' 

These fine manners find in Lancelot their sort 
of living impersonation. He moves, and breathes, 
and speaks, and acts full man, full gentleman, the 
knightliest of all the court, the star of chivalry. 
But our grand poet, loving all that is pure and 
chaste in life, will not allow Lancelot to pass by 
as something perfect, as something to be revered 
only. He will not let us see him without the 
cloud upon his brow, fallen from his sin with 
Guinevere, and against the king. Noble, grand, 
he stands up still, but a chequered image, " for the 



ALFKED TENNYSON. 87 

great and guilty love he bare the queen, in battle 
with the love he bare his lord, had marred his 
face, and marked it ere his time." In grand 
consciousness of this, the grand man, though 
fallen, says himself: "In me there dwells no 
greatness, save it be some far-off touch of great- 
ness, to know well I am not great : there (pointing 
to Arthur), there is the man !" 

Yes, there is the man; for Lancelot and every 
other figure become eclipsed and lost in the lustre 
that surrounds the king. Not without reason, 
but rightly, are they named '' The Idylls of the 
King;" for he is the ever-present unity of the 
whole, and all else is ancillary merely. To the 
eye' of the bard, no purer, greater figure ever grew 
than this of Arthur. To the eye of the reader, 
also, most truly can it be said to grow : for it is 
only at the last, when we have reached the focus 
of the climax, that a thousand little traits that we 
had passed unheeded suddenly flash together, in 
our consciousness, into an image of such pure and 
perfect herohood, that our own small humanity 
must dilate to hold it. The art with which the 
individual beams, at first scattered here and there, 
and lost to sight, are, at length, and all at once, 
and suddenly, in one transcendent and astounding 



88 ALFKED TENNYSON. 

focus, gathered, is, beyond expression, great. Into 
this focus even " The Morte d' Arthur '' enters as 
'a component ray of no weak lustre ; and now it 
is only that we understand who he was "who 
fought all day in Lyonnesse ;" him for whom Sir 
Bedivere "made broad his shoulders to receive 
his weight ; " him who told us, " More things are 
wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." 
Queen Guinevere, and Lancelot, and all the court, 
were, after all, not of this man's height. To her 
and them " he was all fault who had no fault f 
whom she could love, whom they could love 
-" must have a touch of earth : " " it was the low 
sun made the colour." He was but " a moral 
child,'' " a passionate perfection," and " who can 
gaze upon the sun in heaven ? " To them noble- 
ness was tameness. To such interpreters, "his 
white blamelessness, from over-fineness not in- 
telligible, was accounted blame." Yet the un- 
"bonscious instinct of his greatness lies in them 
all, and radiates from them all. 

See him, how he moves among them ! Vivien 
has spoken words of invitation to him, " at which 
the king had gazed upon her blankly, and gone 
by." Enid, " gravely smiling, he lifts from horse, 
and kisses with all pureness, brother-like, and 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 89 

shows an empty tent allotted her, and glancing 
for a moment till he sees her pass into it," turns 
then, etc. Oh, the mild face of this blameless 
king ! we see it even when Geraint begs per- 
mission to leave the court, " and the king mused 
for a little on his plea, but, last, allowing it,'' etc. 
What noble trust he has in his dear friend, the 
great Sir Lancelot, and in his queen ! When the 
courtiers pledge the two, Sir Lancelot and her, 
he, the king, listens, smiling ; for pure and great 
himself, they, too, are pure and great, and the 
love between them must be pure and great and 
chivalrous, and it pleases him, as between such 
dear ones. When suspicion comes, it finds the 
soil so noble that it has pains to grow : " and the 
king glanced first at him, then her, and went his 
way." How he felt, and what he did, when the 
truth came, make manifest the man. The queen 
says, " He never spake a word of reproach to me ; 
he never had a glimpse of mine untruth/' How 
could he — he who " honoured his own word as if 
it were his God's," and was so white himself that 
his whiteness shone upon and hid the blacknesses 
of those around him ? 

Let us see him in the fight, " this moral child ;" 
let us see " the king charge at the head of all his 



90 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

Table Eound, and break " the foe ! Let us see 
him, 

" High on a heap of slain, from spur to plume, 
Red as the rising sun with heathen blood ! " 

And seeing him thus, let us remember how mild 
he is at home, how " if his own knight casts him 
down, he laughs, saying his knights are better 
men than he." Yet Lancelot " never saw his 
like " in war : " there lives no greater leader.'' 

Then see him with Lancelot, even after sus- 
picion has been whispered to him : he flings one 
arm about his neck " with full affection,'' and 
says, 

" Lancelot, my Lancelot, thou in whom I have 
Most love and most affiance, for I know 
What thou hast been in battle by my side." 

These are some of the traits that we pass, and 
hardly see, but which flash up suddenly into our 
recollection, when we hear his last words to the 
queen, and get the last glimpse of his face, 
" which then was as an angel's." For these con- 
stitute the climax, and there is the focus of which 
we have spoken. These the last words of the 
king over the queen, " grovelling at his feet, with 
her face against the floor," issuing, as it were, 
from the great wound in his mighty heart, rise 



ALFKED TENNYSON. 91 

up like the yearning music of a pure god in sor- 
row. Hollow, monotonous, terrible with wrong, 
awful with prophecy, deep with the depth of 
doom, the voice of the blameless king, now 
superhuman, strikes, clang on clang, appalling 
the sinner at his feet, appalling us. All the sad 
story : the treachery, the sin, the grief, the ruin 
of the noblest plans, the sense of greatness unap- 
preciated, the wrong to friendship and to faith, 
"the pang that made his tears burn, while he 
weighed their hearts with one too wholly true to 
dream untruth in them ;'' the grand tenderness- 
tenderness as of a woman, a man, a saint — in him 
"whose vast pity almost made him die;'' the 
grand forgiveness, the mighty love unchanged, 
unchangeable ; the hope that, '' leaning on our 
fair father, Christ," and purified, she yet may 
claim him '' in that world where all are pure," — 
all comes upon the reader, who feels himself 
transformed, intensified, as by communication 
with the hearts of angels — all comes upon him 
— and his heart is swollen and his eyes burn — all 
comes upon him with a sense of grandeur, with a 
weight and conflict of emotion, with a sublimity 
of sorrow, such as he shall have for the first time 
then experienced from the power of poet. " 



92 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

true and tender ! selfless man, and stainless 
gentleman ! " well might the queen exclaim : 
" Ah, great and gentle lord, who wast, as is the 
conscience of a saint among his warring senses, 
to thy knights — now I see thee what thou art ; 
thou art the highest and most human too ; not 
Lancelot, nor another !" Yes, the highest and 
most human too ; not Lancelot, nor another ! A 
king indeed, a man, a gentleman, a royal man, a 
royal gentleman — " the king !" Can we see him, 
and not grow better ? Can we think upon that 
clear face, without acknowledgment that we pos- 
sess, through Tennyson, the light of another moral 
sun within us, which sun has been gathered by 
the poet from the infinite white light of Christ, 
and fixed, to guide us, within the large ideal of a 
Christian king ? 

Ideal certainly, and superhuman, are these 
shapes, but not mhuman ; no good feature there 
but may be ours. As for Enid, we should pity 
that man who has not seen and known and loved 
her somewhere — somewhere as mother, sister, 
daughter, wife, rare as she certainly becomes : 
for Enid, once the ideal of an Englishwoman, now 
too " slow" for these " fast'' times, and ill at ease 
beneath the bold eyes of the new audacity, can 



ALFKED TENNYSON. 93 

find but little favour anywhere now-a-days, and 
is hardly even seen by our oil'd Assyrian arbiters. 

We do not agree, then, with the objection that 
the personages in these poems are " unreal, and 
belong to fairy land f on the contrary, we believe 
them valuable wholly and solely for the humanity 
that is in them. That that humanity should be 
demonstrated alien to the actual world, and not 
in us, would nowise move us ; for that humanity, 
if not now in us, was once in us, and should still 
be in us. If we are so wedded to colour that 
these transparent lovelinesses are invisible to us, 
the blame is ours, the loss is ours. The objection, 
in short, is baseless, and, if admitted, would wither 
up, not these alone, but all the other great shapes 
shadowless of sacred poesy. 

In these Idylls we have the very purest growths 
of genius ; and they are presented to us with all 
the charms of the most finished art. No effort 
now ; no straining for originality ; the light touch 
of the master everywhere ! The story flows on 
with entrancing simplicity ; and w^e are ever and 
anon surprised into tears, touched to the quick by 
the mere beauty of it. The simplicity, too, is not 
bald, not austere, but soft, and delicate, and lus- 
trous. "To doubt the fairness of these poems 



94 ALFKED TENNYSON. 

were to want an eye ; to doubt their pureness 
were to want a heart." 

There remains for us but one work of Tenny- 
son's, the '' In Memoriam," to notice now. The 
others, as Idylls, seemed to form a unity, and 
came naturally together ; this one, however, 
stands apart in a solitude all its own. There 
is a love here greater than the love of women ; a 
grief deep as the grief of mothers in bereavement. 
Early associations — and, in confirmation, consult 
Longfellow's " Golden Milestone " — constitute the 
tree that clasps closest to the heart of the poet, 
growing into it with root and branch and tendril : 
tear this tree up, and oh, the sacred blood that 
rains upon the ground ! We feel indeed as if this 
were one of those things so inexpressibly holy 
that they are for silence and the heart only : the 
noises of the world sound loud and sacrilegious 
here. We stand upon the threshold of the sacred 
cell that held his tears, that holds the voice of his 
distress for ever, and dare hardly venture in. The 
minstrel bowed upon his lyre — this lyre's fitful 
note — awe and appal us. Here, if ever, however, 
is a human heart nakedly given us, and we may 
not reject the lesson. 

The particular grief we shall pass in silence ; 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 95 

guessing only "from its measure'' the greatness 
as well of mourned as mourner. Tor us, it shall 
not be the heart of the poet, but the broken heart 
of the century that wails here in an absolute 
music. For indeed it is not a particular, but a 
universal grief that constitutes the burthen of 
these melodious tears. The soul of the poet, 
solemnized by the great shadow that has fallen 
into it, rises into sublimity, and wrestles, Job- 
like, with the unanswerable Why ? Deep doubt 
has seized him ; for these are days of doubt, and 
scepticism is sovereign of the hour. How be- 
neath the weight of all these doubts, this good 
soul struggles, lifting to the cope of heaven eyes 
so pitiful, prayers so fervently earnest ! He 
would indeed be the child of God : but the air is 
dark, and he knows not where to turn. His soul 
heaves yearningly Godward : but ever and anon 
the knowledge of the day falls, like a cold dawn, 
with a shiver on him ; and faith faints helplessly 
into the arms of despair. That there is " no hope 
of fame for modern rhyme," "that fame itself 
expires in endless age ;" these are small matters. 
But now to him "time has become a maniac 
scattering dust," "life a fury slinging flame," 
"and men but flies, that sting, lay eggs, and die ;" 



96 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

and hope there seems none, but, as a particle of 
matter, " to be blown about the desert dust," or 
''sealed within the iron hills." The poems ex- 
pressing these dismal mental experiences are, we 
hesitate not to say, absolutely unexcelled, whether 
in ancient or in modern verse. We refer more 
particularly to Nos. 53, 54, 55, and others in the 
immediate neighbourhood of these. It is in one 
of these that the reader will find what we have 
been accustomed to consider — when taken in con- 
nexion with the general context — the grandest 
poetical image that has ever been produced, those 
" great world's altar-stairs that slope through 
darkness up to God." Throughout the whole of 
these magnificent psalms, we have expressions fur- 
nished us, the most trenchant and incisive, for all 
the subtlest turns of educated reflection : no 
point of cultured speculation but has here its 
word. One glories in this triumph of expression i 
one feels glad that every phantom has received 
its name at last, and that we have thus power, at 
will, to summon them into day. Still, again, one 
feels sad ; one feels unsatisfied : can the poet name 
the phantoms only, can he not lay them also ? 
Eight is it to put the problem : to put the pro- 
blem, and to put it truly, is the duty of every 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 97 

true man. Far happier were those days, certainly 
when the problem was not put, and when every 
man lived and moved and had his being in an all- 
unconscious answer ; but our days have been 
otherwise appointed ; we, it seems, must put the 
problem. But, after all, are we but putting it ? 
The happiness of the unconscious answer is 
certainly denied us evermore ; but have we really 
not yet attained to the greater happiness, the 
clearer happiness of a conscious answer ? Do not 
we touch here a question much more important 
than the mere putting of the problem ? As for 
that, indeed, has not the problem been put and 
put again ; and, as regards mere putting, has it 
not, at length, reached its ultimate perfection ? 
To what end repeat and re-repeat, and why for 
ever in these days the sound of doubt, disgust, 
complaint, hopelessness, weariness, despair ? The 
path of literature after forty, is it only from 
gloom to gloom ? Dickens used to cheer us with 
the freshness of the mere senses, the elasticity 
of the mere animal heart : but where is all his 
buoyancy now ? Have we nothing left but flat- 
ness, insipidity, staleness ? Thackeray, once on 
a time, could make us hate the meanness of pre- 
tension ; but has he become himself a portion of 

G 



98 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

that which, all his life, he has so exclusively and 
industriously watched and held up to ridicule ? Is 
his pen but a weary snob, ineffably Uasee, un- 
utterably used up, that yawns in blank satiety 
even while it so glibly nibs over the paper ? And 
Carlyle too — is there not a tone of inexpressible 
sadness in him ? Then Tennyson, and the ques- 
tionings of ''In Memoriam !" Why is this? Is 
there nothing for the race but scepticism and the 
senses, or — scepticism and suicide ? Surely we 
have advanced, at last, beyond the mere putting 
of the problem ; surely the answering of it " must 
even now be of ripe progress ^" Surely there is 
this answer, at all events, that Christianity, after 
French criticism, and German criticism, and ac- 
cepting each for what it is worth, and for all it is 
worth, is a purer thing than ever, and that it will 
live for ever, and grow for ever ! The cheerless 
atheism of Feuerbach, and the preposterous auto- 
theism of Max Stirner (if in earnest), are, we 
know, externally the latest fruits of the latest 
philosophy : but they are only externally so ; 
and neither ever really possessed any umbilical 
cord of junction. No : the true result of the 
latest philosophy — the true result of Kant and 
Hegel — is, that knowledge and belief coalesce in 



ALFKED TENNYSON.. 99 

lucid union, that to reason as to faith there is but 
one religion, one God, and one Eedeemer. 

The small section who affront the sun of 
Sunday with their petty pamphlets in their open 
shops — who occupy, so self-complacently, their 
flimsy world of an "Age of Eeason," — who 
pretend still to read by the paltry light of French 
enlightenment, — have been certainly left behind 
by that other party who — in the midst of a 
certain uneasy hesitation, that, Antseus-like, must 
seek renewal of strength from time to time in the 
earth of the senses — profess adhesion to the faith 
of Schelling in his Spinozistic epoch ; but both 
have been far transcended by those whom philo- 
sophy has enabled consciously to return to the 
feet of a Mediator and Saviour. 

This is the last great step ; and it is right that 
poetry should know of it, that she may apply 
herself to the more congenial task of singing faith 
than of pointing doubt. Still the reader must not 
infer that Tennyson, rising, in the sad darkness of 
the bereaved hour, into the sublime atmosphere 
of Job, ever condescends to the shabby prose of 
infidelity. We have said already that his humble 
heart turns always to the one true refuge ; nor 
indeed has any poet, not even excepting Cowper, 



100 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

written with a purer piety than the bard of " In 
Memoriam." His "faith is large in Time, and 
that which shapes it to some perfect end." If he 
has " touched a jarring lyre at first," he strives 
to "make it true" in the end; and he attains 
finally the grand hope, with which his dead friend 
is mingled, to 

*' Arrive at last the blessed goal, 
When He that died in Holy Land, 
Will reach us out the shining hand 
And take us as a single soul." 

But the cloud does not sit upon him for ever ; 
rising, it " lets the sun strike where it clung ;" 
and Tennyson, issuing from his grief, has soared 
to truth and humanized his song. He has come 
to see that poetry is something infinitely higher 
than a mere refinement of cultivated leisure ; he 
desires to make it operative towards a purpose ; 
he seeks to lead it, like a purifying spirit, reno- 
vatingly, into the actual and the practical. 
Hence " The Princess," and " The King,'' and the 
reflective portions of " Maud." We shall not 
depreciate these great services to humanity ; still 
we anticipate from Tennyson a turning to the 
practical completer yet. The '' stitch, stitch, 
stitch " of " The Shirt," though in a certain sense 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 101 

a very common sound, and heard in a worse 
than common room, is really much sublimer 
than the consciously-intervolved word- vapour of 
Wordsworth on his mountain-top. The "One 
more unfortunate" on Waterloo Bridge is really 
more poetical than " Guinevere f and sorrows 
like these cry piteously for help to us from 
every corner. Oh the wrongs of children, for 
example, in the rank brick- work of fastidious 
London ! Was ever world more cruelly confused 
and desperate? And shall not the poet aid to 
purify, to sweeten, and to cleanse? His true 
themes lie not, after all, in the shadowy legends 
of a buried past. He himself says, "Nature 
brings not back the mastodon, and why should 
any man remodel models T The poet, with his 
stylus and his tablets, gliding between the forest 
and the sea, or winding round the cataract to the 
mountain, is not, after all, our highest figure ; nor 
is his highest hest the polishing of carven cedar in 
refined and amiable solitude. It is the present 
that must minister to the present ; vainly shall 
we expect an adequate and effectual healing from 
the recovered images of an ancient tomb. 

We have already assigned to Tennyson the 
nearest place to Milton ; still all such decisions 



102 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

of relative rank are to a certain extent invidious, 
one-sided, and untrue. There is in Milton a 
density and intensity of metal, audible in the 
very breadth and depth of the mere ring of it, 
that securely place him above all later aspirants ; 
but as we have hinted, we are not without com- 
punctions in singling out Tennyson from all 
these for the next place. Dryden and Pope give 
rise to no uneasiness, for they are poets of another 
class. To Burns we can do justice apart, and 
on other grounds. With Cowper, Campbell, 
Southey, Moore, we can set ourselves right. 
Even Byron and Coleridge shall not excite a 
qualm, for they are mere Bedouins of verse — 
nomads — not settlers in the realms of song. Our 
difficulties relate, all of them, to Wordsworth, 
Keats, and Shelley. 

When we think of the "Laodamia,'' for ex- 
ample, we are compelled to admit that there is 
in Tennyson nothing more perfect, whether in 
thought or execution, nothing higher, nothing 
purer, while, at the same time, if not grander, it 
is at least denser in tone than anything this poet 
has yet produced. Then Shelley, with his ima- 
gination as of the unclouded blue when nothing 
but the sun is there — his selfless heart — his 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 103 

boundless sympathies — his pity and his gentle- 
ness — his images, which are as living sublimities 
that awe — the supernatural melodies of his verse 
— the unparalleled splendour and magnificence of 
his innumerable products — how shall we abate 
him under any man? Keats again, so fecund, 
facile, full, with his delicious sound, his instan- 
taneous instinct of the very self of elemental 
beauty, his sumptuous fancy, his gracious ima- 
gination — Keats, blowing a pipe so mellow that it 
charms, whispering single words that are as ''open 
sesames'' to the most enchanting secrets — Keats 
perplexes us in turn. Where can we find grounds 
to justify our preference? As compared with 
either Shelley or Keats, we cannot claim for 
Tennyson any superiority of original endowment ; 
he is probably inferior to the former in material 
grandeur, as to the latter in material richness. 
Perhaps his coinage is less red-new than theirs ; 
perhaps his imagery does not always blend 
indissolubly into one essence with the thought 
like theirs, but stands side by side with it, 
illustratively, rhetorically. Perhaps there is in 
him more art, in them more nature. How found 
his higher seat, then ? 

As regards Wordsworth, on the other hand. 



104 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

conceding, perhaps, superior richness of origi- 
nal nature to Tennyson, how shall we prefer 
his products before that "Laodamia" which we 
have already vaunted ? Coleridge sums up 
Wordsworth's excellences under six heads, which 
are shortly these: — 1. Pure, appropriate lan- 
guage; 2. Weight and sanity of original reflec- 
tion ; 3. Sinewy strength of lines and paragraphs ; 
4. Truth to nature ; 5. Subtle thought in unison 
with sensibility, and sympathy with man as 
man ; 6. Imaginative power. Now, every one of 
these six attributes can be predicated quite as 
truly of Tennyson as of Wordsworth, and, reflec- 
tion apart, quite as truly, sometimes more truly, 
both of Keats and Shelley. Coleridge's character- 
istics are evidently too general then — they do 
not possess sufficient definiteness of specific limi- 
tation to enable us to apply them as criteria 
regulative and distributive of the distinctive 
merits of any poet : they are clues tied to a 
hundred boles ; they are general, and not, as they 
profess themselves, special, critical tests. 

Perhaps, on the whole, we may sum up the 
problem not too incorrectly thus : — 

In regard to the question of relative supe- 
riority, Tennyson's difficulties with Wordsworth 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 105 

concern not the man but the products; while 
with Keats and Shelley they respect less the 
products than the men. 

We have always believed that Wordsworth did 
not bring with him so directly and absolutely 
from nature the rich-flushed ivory of the poet's 
soul as either of his three younger rivals. We 
fancy we detect all through Wordsworth an occa- 
sional insonority as of original wood. In fact, if 
we consider Wordsworth, in his general character 
as thinking man, we must admit that his intelli- 
gence was, in many directions and to a con- 
siderable extent, opaque and wooden. Such, we 
find from The Representative Men, he must have 
manifested himself to Emerson. The woody fibre 
present in the man, however, disappears from his 
products. His best sonnets, " The Vernal Ode," 
'' Laodamia," etc., are wholly free from it : it 
has been roasted out and a perfect metallic ring 
obtained. It is the quality of this metallic ring, 
its density, that seems to attach to Wordsworth, 
relatively to Tennyson, greater weight, greater 
breadth, greater size, and to approximate him 
more naturally and justly to Milton. We feel, 
however, that much of this density is Milton's 
own ; that it is the result of life-long study and 



106 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

effort on the part of Wordsworth, who, in all 
probability, would never have come near it had 
not the metal of " Comus," the " Odes," and the 
" Sonnets '' ever rung in his ear. Observe, too, 
how often Wordsworth's '' points " are bnt affairs 
of words. Tennyson has been accused of affec- 
tation, but the censure is much more relevant to 
Wordsworth. In the ripe works of the former 
there is no affectation unfilled by a solid core of 
substance, while in the best productions of the 
latter affectations abound, consisting of mere form, 
and all but wholly empty. Wordsworth has been 
called a metaphysical poet. Of metaphysics pro- 
per he knows nothing ; and how often do we not 
find the passages specially so named mere convo- 
luted vapours of laborious breath, involving only a 
fraudulent sublimity of tumid verbiage ? Words- 
worth's very position was adverse to the produc- 
tion of the humaner and more valuable results of 
the art. It is not in the nature of things that a 
man who sets himself to stare at mountains and 
at lakes only should, in the end, really enrich 
himself. In such exclusive companionship huma- 
nity will well from him, and he will become rigid 
as his own rocks, narrow and bald and indurated. 
Wordsworth, then, probably inferior to Tenny- 



ALFKED TENNYSON. 107 

son in primitive and original, becomes certainly 
inferior to him in ultimate and acquired man- 
hood. Then again, as regards the products, if 
there seems a superior density of tone in some of 
them, this merit is weakened by reflection on its 
source. Here, then, we found the claim of Tenny- 
son to superiority, on greater native manhood, 
and on the greater variety, richness, and more 
human interests of his successful products. It is 
really a great matter that we hear, in Tennyson, 
a voice from the whole range of culture. 

In regard to Shelley and Keats, it is not the 
natural Tennyson that is greater than either : it 
is the ripe maturity of his thought, wrought into 
the fair products of his imagination, that has 
bestowed on these a weight and value, rare in 
any poet, and mostly wanting in the young effu- 
sions of Keats and Shelley. Thus, then, Tenny- 
son is distinguished from Wordsworth, on the 
one hand, by superiority, as well of original 
richness as of acquired range ; and, on the other 
hand, from Keats and Shelley by the ripe matu- 
rity and full humanity of his products. 

There is one characteristic in which, though it 
is common to all great writers, Tennyson is unusu- 
ally eminent — it is the faculty of conception, or of 



108 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

inner perception, inner vision. He never writes 
until he has fairly pictured all; and while he 
writes, his eye never for a moment quits the 
picture, but passes on from point to point with 
luminous fidelity and unerring accuracy. The 
anecdote of Arthur treading on a crowned skele- 
ton, from which the crown rolls into light, and, 
turning on its rim, flees, etc., will illustrate our 
meaning. Equally good illustrations may be 
found in the fall of Geraint, his battles, the scene 
with Enid in the hall of Doorm, the tournament 
in Elaine, and the final interview of the king with 
the queen. In this minute picture-work, Tenny- 
son is always particularly vivid. It is no speci- 
ality of his, however, but belongs to all great 
writers. To tell the whole truth, it is the secret of 
literature in general : look at it but deep enough, 
and even the commonest old tub, red-hooped awry, 
will suggest words to render it interesting. 

The main characteristics of Tennyson are yet 
to mention : they are ethical conception and 
classical execution ; the latter being but the 
necessary concomitant and natural shadow of the 
former. The central sun of all Tennyson's writ- 
ings is the heart : this is the reflection that lies 
in his deepest deeps. " In Memoriam " alone de- 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 109 

monstrates Tennyson to possess the richest, purest, 
truest, natural heart, perhaps, of any poet on 
record ; and with this natural heart is involved 
what we name the whole ethical side of him. We 
know no poet that has ever displayed an equal 
sense of moral goodness in its two forms of great- 
ness in man and of purity in woman. To all 
forms of these he rises thrilling, dilating, brimming. 
He is the most Christian of poets. This is his 
leading attribute ; and the classic execution is but 
its emanation, but its natural garment. 

Milton is moral certainly ; but he is fierce, in- 
tolerant, Hebraic ; while Tennyson is gentle, sweet, 
and Christian. Wordsworth is also moral; but 
he is cold and thin, while Tennyson is warm and 
rich. There is a spirit of gentleness in Keats and 
Shelley, especially the latter, which is ethic cer- 
tainly; but, in Keats, it is aimless and lost in 
mere sensuous beauty, while, in Shelley, it is a too 
eager longing only that rushes into error. 

It is this ethical or human side of Tennyson 
that involved his necessity for maturity and ex- 
perience. To Keats, who had no quest but 
sensuous beauty, boyhood sufl&ced. To Shelley 
again, who, too eager to wait, too impatient even 
for the laws of time, must, instantly and at once, 



1 ] ALFRED TENNYSON. 

give voice and shape to all his crude sympathies 
and torrid anticipations, youth gave verge enough. 
But Tennyson, who bore the burthen of a purer, 
richer, larger humanity, required the breadths of 
Space for his roots and the heights of Time for 
his branches. 

Such are the results of a comparison of Tenny- 
son with several of our greatest Idyllists. We 
may say that Milton keeps the summit of the 
hill, and sits amid the thunders ; that Wordsworth 
has chosen for himself a separate crag, where he 
lives in a somewhat thin complacency, but waited 
on by simple dignity and solemn earnestness ; 
that Shelley takes the very breast of the moun- 
tain, fronting the firmament and the sun ; that 
Keats has found a haunted wood upon the flank, 
where flash the white feet of the gods and god- 
desses ; and that Tennyson, holding himself free 
to wander where he will, prefers the fields of 
labour and the flowers of culture hard by the 
smoke of roofs.-^ 

1 Many, it must be confessed, will certainly bear recollections 
within them, in the light of which Wordsworth will show beside 
Tennyson as the deep, true, pure, the holy, simple, severe spirit of 
Nature herself beside an artist that rejoices in the lustre of gems 
and jewels and golden prettinesses, in the gauds and knicknacks of 
mere art, — in '^ carven imageries of fruits and flowers, and diamond 
panes of quaint device." But will sincerity of analysis sub- 
stantiate this ? Will not the thought of a certain external effort, 



ALFRED TENNYSON. Ill 

In conclusion, let us but think again of all 
those gentle lovelinesses, and subtle delicacies, 
and manly greatnesses, that name themselves 
"Godiva," '^ Lady Clare," "Enid," "Ulysses," 
" Arthur ; " let us think of the passionate in- 
tensity of " Maud,'' of the exuberant phantasy of 
" The Princess," of the ripe culture, deep thought, 
and long, long wail of " In Memoriam ; '' let us 
think of the true eye for character in the Ode to 
the great Duke and elsewhere ; let us not forget, 
either, the poet's kindly, genial, manly letter to 
his friend Maurice ; let us recall all these, and 
the one tendency that directs them all, 

" To keep down the base in man, 
To teach high thought, and amiable words, 
And courtliness, and the desire of fame, 
And love of truth, and all that makes a man ; " 

and surely we must agree that, unless language be 
hypocrisy and literature a sham, this is not only 
the richest, purest, and truest of poets, but also — 
so far as publicity reaches — the richest, purest, 
and truest living man. 

a certain thinness, a certain meagreness and prose, obtrude to 
take from the one, of a thousand realities, a thousand truest 
triumphs, to add to the other ? It is a happiness in the end, be 
all that as it may, that we can afford to worship at both shrines. 
Browning, as requiring first of all a special analysis, has not 
been mentioned above ; if less rich, or less richly-tuned, than one 
of the others, he is probably stronger than either. 



LORD MACAULAY. 

Judging from such notices as we have read, it 
would seem difficult for the critics of the day to 
speak of this eminent man in other terms than 
those of extreme admiration, or of not much less 
extreme dislike. The way in which the whole 
stock quiver of superlatives has, on this occasion, 
been precipitately emptied, and its contents in- 
discriminately applied, reminds us of a passage of 
Lord Macaulay's own. He remarks, in reference 
to a certain successful speech, that it was said of 
it, " that it was more ornamented than the 
speech5fe of Demosthenes, and less diffuse than 
those of Cicero." ^' This unmeaning phrase,'' he 
continues, " has been quoted a hundred times ; 
that it should ever have been quoted except to 
be laughed at, is strange : the vogue which it has 
obtained may serve to show in how slovenly a way 
most people are content to think!' A truer obser- 
vation has very seldom been made ; and we dare 



LORD MACAIJLAY. 113 

say the recollection of our readers has not any 
very difficult or distant journey to travel back for 
the discovery of illustrations in professional criti- 
cisms on Lord Macaulay himself. Where there 
are no bounds neither is there any centre, and 
there reigns only a futile and impracticable vague. 
This we, for our part, would fain eschew. In 
short, a characterization that, with precision of 
limit, shall possess a coherent, reasoned interior 
of discernment and discrimation — this is our ob- 
ject ; and, if we fail in its accomplishment, we 
can assure our readers that it will be against our 
own best effi^rts. 

To those who look forward to the triumphs of 
literary or political life, the career of Macaulay is 
no less instructive than interesting. What ele- 
ments of success were given him, and, still more, 
what elements of success he himself brought, 
deserve, on the part of all such aspirants, the 
very closest attention. If it be true, as regards 
the former of these considerations, that he seems, 
from the very first, to have been borne, as it were, 
on supporting hands, steadily onwards, from place 
to place, and from honour to honour, till ambition 
the very greediest would have called content- 
no less true is it that, but for the second con- 

H 



114 LORD MACAULAY. 

sideration, but for the elements of success which 
he himself brought, these places would never have 
been held, and these honours could never have 
been accorded. Had the youth displayed no 
talent, had he written no prize poems, had he 
not shone in the Union Debating Club, all the 
wealth of Zachary Macaulay his father, and all 
the influence of Wilberforce his friend, would 
have been powerless to aid — would have been 
powerless to extract from Lord Brougham one 
single word of that long letter of advice which, 
received in young Macaulay's twenty-third year, 
must have exercised a most valuable influence on 
his whole character and subsequent progress. But 
more, in addition to talent, and in addition to 
study, had not the youth possessed a rare sobriety 
of judgment, a rare perseverance of effort, and a 
rare concentration of purpose, all the other ele- 
ments would have still been futile. It is to the 
union of these elements that we must attribute 
both the steadily progressive advance, and the 
splendid ultimate result that crowned it. The 
irregularities, the impetuosities, the passions, even 
the conscientious scruples of genius, have often 
rendered nugatory the wisest plans of parental 
experience ; and we doubt very much that old 



LORD MACAULAY. 115 

Zachary's sclieme would have attained an equal 
success, had his son been such as Burns or Byron, 
as Shelley or Coleridge, or even as the steady, 
persevering, and victorious, but keen-tempered 
Carlyle. 

In truth, it is very rare to see the means of 
parents, the influence of friends, the powers of 
talent, the application of study, and the perti- 
nacity of effort so long and so unintermittedly 
exerted on a single object. The reader, perhaps, 
has a difficulty in realizing to himself our mean- 
ing here. It wants, however, but one word to 
make the whole case plain to him. Throughout 
the entire course of his life, even from very early 
student days, Thomas Babington Macaulay did 
nothing but, — in its own first words, — " write the 
history of England from the accession of James ll. 
down to a time which is within the memory of 
men now living." He directly admits this : he 
speaks of his History as '' a work which is the 
business and the pleasure of his life." His 
Essays are no less explicit. With exceptions 
that hardly need be noticed, the whole of them 
relate to that object, and several of them are 
actual draughts of that whole history. Consider 
them — Milton, Hallam's " Constitutional History 



i 1 6 LORD MACAULAY. 

of England/' Bunyan, Hampden, " Burleigh and 
Ms Times," " The War of the Spanish Succession/' 
Horace Walpole, Sir James Mackintosh's " His- 
tory of the Eevolution/' William Pitt, Bacon, Sir 
William Temple, Lord Clive, Warren Hastings, 
" The Comic Dramatists of the Eestoration/' 
Samuel Johnson, Frederick the Great, Madame 
D'Arblay, Addison, and the Earl of Chatham ; — 
do not they relate, all of them, to the historical 
period in question, and have we not perhaps been 
too fastidious in omitting from the list Eanke's 
" History of the Popes," and even Southey's 
" Colloquies/' and Gladstone " On Church and 
State" ? Again, to stoop closer, may not the 
Milton, the Hallam, the Hampden, the Burleigh, 
the Mackintosh, and others, be regarded as suc- 
cessive sketches and rechauffees of the whole 
theme ? It may be said, indeed, that it was not 
Kterature that his parents and friends, at all 
events, most probably aimed at ; but our readers 
will have no difficulty in perceiving that even 
Macaulay's political life subserved, in reality, the 
same plan : it supplied him with means, and it 
extended to him the special experience necessary 
for the peculiar History he contemplated. 

Thus then, parents, friends, position, study, and 



LORD MACAULAY. 117 

inclination, all working together to a common 
end, triumph was their due, and triumph came. 

But the concentration of endeavour is, on the 
part of Macaulay, even greater than we have yet 
named. A favourite position of Thomas Carlyle, 
in some of his earlier essays, is, that David Hume 
constitutes the intellectual king of these days. 
By this he means that the opinions, the ideas, the 
system of thought, the general mode and manner 
of intellectually looking at and judging matters 
which characterized that philosopher, had become 
the common thinking property, the common 
thinking furniture of the majority of leading men. 
Of course Carlyle by no means intends to intimate 
that all these leading men are of necessity sceptics, 
or infidels, or bound to each and every special 
opinion of David Hume, but simply that a certain 
general cast of mind which, in the case of this 
celebrated man, had attained to great complete- 
ness and distinctness of development, had been 
inherited and adopted by them. In this sense, 
we find ourselves constrained to say that the in- 
tellectual father of Lord Macaulay was eminently 
David Hume. We fancy it is always with a sense 
of secret satisfaction and inward complacency 
that Macaulay mentions the very name of Hume. 



118 LOED MACAULAY. 

He talks of him with unction as "a great his- 
torian," and seems to linger with fond admiration 
over his " narrative, which is likely to last as long 
as the English tongue." The present generation 
is perhaps, on the whole, not quite disposed to 
extend so much of its favour to David Hume, 
and may question the position we assume. But 
one glance at the last generation, with its Godwins, 
Benthams, Molesworths, with even its Sir James 
Mackintoshes and Lord Jeffreys, will suffice for 
the perception of an anterior probability in regard 
to our opinion ; and a consideration of the mental 
points of view common to such men as Mill and 
Buckle in our own day will probably confirm it. 

What we would allege then is, that the young 
ambition of Macaulay — nay, that the enduring, 
life-long ambition of Macaulay — was to find him- 
self side by side with David Hume, as the 
continuator of his History, and as an inseparably 
conjunct and equal classic. For this he amassed, 
even while at college, and year after year indus- 
triously afterwards, all those great stores of read- 
ing and information that bore directly or indirectly 
on this one subject. For this he tried himself in 
relevant periodical papers, and feared no waste; 
for he said to himself cheerily and proudly : 



LORD MACAULAY. 119 

One day, in the long evening of my life, I will 
throw over these, connecting them into oneness, 
the bulk of an entire history, and this history, 
over these essays, shall be as the great dome of a 
cathedral that closes unitingly over its many rich 
and splendid chapels. But the will of man on 
earth can never assure itself of identity with the 
will of God in heaven ; and Macaulay, when he 
had executed, with unintermitted exactitude and 
complete success, three-fourths of the programme 
he had set himself, vanished from among us, 
leaving in consternation before the gap of an 
unparalleled fragment the largest assembly of 
spectators that any single historian had ever seen 
around him. 

In our view, then, the life-long aim that de- 
termined the general action of Lord Macaulay 
was eminently simple. A like simplicity, and of 
identical origin, distinguished his character, as 
well as all his principles, literary, political, 
philosophical, and religious. In fact, all that to 
analysis is summed up in the name of David 
Hume, is centrally operative in these also. And 
yet, at first view, the two men seem directly 
antagonistic. Hume was a Tory, Macaulay is a 
Whig ; Hume was a sceptical metaphysician. 



120 LORD MACAULAY. 

Maoaulay has abandoned metaphysics ; Hume 
:^idiculed the church, Macaulay attends the church ; 
Hume swore by Pope and sniffed at Shakespeare, 
Macaulay swears by Shakespeare and sniffs at Pope. 
Positions more diametrically opposite, and on the 
most important concerns of humanity, political, 
philosophical, religious, literary, it is impossible to 
find. Still it is our deep belief that no single 
phrase {mutatis mutandis) can more completely 
and comprehensively describe Thomas Babington 
Macaulay than this : he is David Hume in the 
nineteenth century, conformed to the church, and 
author of the continuation of " The History of 
England." 

In truth, Hume was a Tory by Jacobitic pre- 
dilection only : he was a Whig in principle — so 
far, at least, as we are to name that principle from 
the practice of the present day. What, in fact, is 
the system of thought that David Hume is held 
to represent ? In one word, it is the philosophy 
of the eighteenth century. Now, to most of us, 
that one word is suggestive only of infidelity, 
free-thinking, deism, atheism, of scepticism in 
religion, of sensualism in philosophy, and of 
republicanism in politics. Still to apply any of 
these terms to the philosophy of the eighteenth 



LORD MACAULAY. 121 

century would be to name it badly, for, though 
the doctrines and opinions implied in such ex- 
pressions are certainly concomitants and attend- 
ants of that philosophy, they are, in reality, only 
phenomenal and temporary forms. English think- 
ers, whichever side they have taken, have been 
content to remain with a very indistinct, obscure, 
and confused consciousness on these points ; and 
the consequence is, that at this moment we know 
of no single really intelligent and fully enlight- 
ened discussion of this subject in the English 
language. The Germans, on the contrary, have 
coolly turned upon it, lifted it, looked at it, and 
examined it piecemeal, till now, having at length 
fairly filled and satisfied themselves with what of 
instruction, negative or positive, they could ex- 
tract from it, they have long since packed it up, 
and laid it on the shelf, labelled Aufhldrung, a 
word which, meaning in its ordinary use simply 
enlightenment — up-lighting or lighting-up — and 
badly rendered edaircissement by Mr. Sibree, may 
be here translated, with reference at once to the 
special up-lighting implied, and a certain noto- 
rious exposition of that up-lighting, the '' Age of 
Eeason/' Now, into this subject it is not our 
cue to enter ; it suffices our objects to say at once 



122 LORD MACAULAY. 

that tlie fundamental principle of the Aufklarung, 
of the iip-lighting, of the " age of reason/' of the 
philosophy of the eighteenth century, is, in one of 
Lord Macaulay's favourite phrases, the right of 
private judgment. This really constituted the 
spiritual attitude of humanity — its principle — in 
the eighteenth century ; and the majority of the 
reproaches usual in this connexion concern not 
that attitude, not that principle, but a variety of 
secondary or temporary phenomena, necessarily 
or contingently concomitant. 

It will have already suggested itself perhaps, 
then, to our readers, that this phrase, right of 
private judgment, still tinged, be it observed, with 
the peculiar colours of its peculiar birth-time, is 
very fairly capable of being named the leading 
principle in the political, philosophical, and reli- 
gious opinions of Lord Macaulay. Our space 
allows us only to touch such points ; but we hope 
that the touch, light as it is, will elicit such 
sparks as may enable the reader to follow, more 
or less adequately, the general course of our 
thought here. 

The philosophical opinions of Lord Macaulay 
are neither complicated nor abstruse. In his 
system the A priori has no place; everything 



LORD MACAULAY. 123 

must demonstrate its legitimacy to him a posteriori 
and by induction. " All systems/' he says, " reli- 
gious, political, or scientific, are but opinions 
resting on evidence more or less satisfactory/' 
With metaphysics he will not meddle ; they are 
beyond the province of humanity. The specula- 
tions of Hume in this field, with his "Enquiry 
concerning the Hun^an Understanding," his in- 
vestigation of the theory of morals, and his dis- 
courses of Palamedes concerning the state Fourli 
• — these speculations have no other result in the 
eyes of Macaulay than to demonstrate the im- 
possibility of any rational solution on such sub- 
jects ; accordingly he accepts this conclusion and 
will inquire no further. All, however, that Hume 
can teach him about " the liberty of the press,'* 
" the principles of government,'' '' the science of 
politics," "parliament," "parties," "civil liberty," 
" commerce," " luxury," the " balance of trade," 
" passive obedience," and the " Protestant succes- 
sion," he learns with avidity. Adam Smith, too, 
he makes his own. It is in the same spirit that 
he recurs to Bacon as to "the great apostle of 
experimental science." " Bacon," he says, " said 
nothing about the grounds of moral obligation or 
the freedom of the human will," but he was 



s ^ 



124 LORD MACAULA.Y. 

mightily concerned about " utility and progress." 
These then, utility and progress, are to Macaulay 
the only recommendations. " An acre in Middle- 
sex is better," he says, " than a principality in 
Utopia." And he has no patience with that 
philosophy which "fills the world with long 
words and long beards, and leaves it as wicked 
and as ignorant as before." He ridicules Cicero 
and Seneca for that, disdaining to supply, they 
preposterously seek to set us above, the wants of 
humanity. He agrees with Bacon that " the 
earlier Greek speculators, Democritus in particu- 
lar, were superior to their more celebrated suc- 
cessors f and of these latter he says : " Assuredly 
if the tree which Socrates planted and Plato 
watered, is to be judged of by its flowers and 
leaves, it is the noblest of trees ; but if we take 
the homely test of Bacon, if we judge of the tree 
by its fruit, our opinion of it may be less favour- 
able." 

Lord Melbourne is represented to have said 
once — " I wish that I was as sure of any one 
thing as Tom Macaulay is sure of everything/' 
Our task here is exposition and not discussion ; 
still we cannot help remarking that the infallible 
correctness ascribed by Lord Melbourne to Mac- 



LOKD MACAULAY. 125 

aulay, demonstrates itself, in one or two of these 
passages, as, after all, human. Democritns, for 
example (though why the inventor of the atomic 
theory — so wonderfully complete in almost every 
detail too — and the great ancient apostle of mate- 
rialism, should be so much of a favourite with 
both Bacon and Macaulay is very plain to us), 
was not earlier than Socrates, but probably several 
years younger. At all events, he was undoubtedly 
contemporary with Socrates, and long survived 
him. The dates of Socrates are B.C. 469-399. 
Democritus is said by the latest authorities to 
have been born in the year B.C. 460, nine years 
after the birth of Socrates ; and he is universally 
admitted to have reached a great age, no less, 
according to some, than that of 104 years. Even 
should we assume B.C. 470 as the birth-year of 
Democritus, the state of the case would remain 
essentially the same. Then, again, it is too bad, 
and indeed rather unlucky, that Macaulay should 
at all quarrel with Socrates, for, in truth, Socrates 
is the father and founder of the very system of 
thought professed by Bacon and by his critic 
after him. The age of Pericles was also an " age 
of reason,'' an era of " up-lighting," and the prin- 
ciple then was the principle now, the right of 



126 LORD MACAULAY. 

private judgment. For this condition of thought, 
Socrates was, though not by any means wholly, 
largely responsible, and he fell a victim to the 
offended traditional institutions which that prin- 
ciple insulted. But, this apart, there is another 
and a stronger reason why Socrates should be 
considered the father and founder of the system 
of thought which, since the time of Bacon, has 
been established among us, and it is this : Soc- 
rates was certainly the originator of generalization* 
This is indisputable ; Socrates invented the ex-, 
press, the methodic, the scientific investigation of 
general ideas, just as certainly as Newton invented 
the theory of gravitation, and much more certainly 
than that Bacon was the first to recall attention 
— such is the merit assigned him by Macaulay — 
to the method of induction by experiment. 

Be this as it may, and passing to the political 
creed of Macaulay, we find this latter of a similar 
colour to the philosophical. " Political science," 
according to him, " is progressive and experi- 
mental like the rest." "Ever since I began to 
observe," he remarks, "I have been seeing nothing 
but growth, and hearing of nothing but decay/' 
Accordingly, he has no patience with the lauda- 
tores temporis acti, but declares them to be "as 



LOED MACAULAY. 127 

ignorant and shallow as people generally are who 
extol the past at the expense of the present." He 
affirms that " the more carefully we examine the 
history of the past, the more reason shall we find 
to dissent from those w^ho imagine that our age 
has been fruitful of new social evils ; the truth is, 
that the evils are, with scarcely an exception, old; 
that which is new is the intelligence which 
discerns and the humanity which remedies them." 
As regards government, then, he is clearly for the 
doctrines of the passive political economists, and 
stand unreservedly by an almost absolute laissez 
faire. To all poetic theories that bear on the 
past, he answers by bills of mortality and tables 
of statistics. Social evils, in his view, must in 
general correct themselves; he will have no inter- 
meddling, and confesses to a horror of all paternal 
government. He knows of no infallible opinion. 
He asks who are the wisest and best. And whose 
opinion is to decide that ? He j^eclares govern- 
ment unfit to direct our opinions, or superintend 
our private habits; and he sums up the whole 
duty of the state thus :— " Our rulers will best 
promote the improvement of the nation by strictly 
confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, 
by leaving capital to find its most lucrative 



128 LORD MACAULAY. 

course, commodities their fair price, industry and 
intelligence their natural reward, idleness and 
folly their natural punishment, by maintaining 
peace, by defending property, by diminishing the 
price of law, and by observing strict economy in 
every department of the state/' 

It is evident, then, that Macaulay's political 
and philosophical principles go hand in hand, and 
that they all take origin in the philosophy of the 
eighteenth century. Indeed, he makes no secret 
of this : he openly eulogizes the Encyclopaedists : 
and it is with great complacency that he is able 
to assert, "By this time the philosophy of the 
eighteenth century had purified English Whiggism 
from that deep taint of intolerance which had 
been contracted during a long and close alliance 
with the Puritanism of the seventeenth century/' 

This sentence brings us, by an obvious transi-- 
tion, to the consideration of Macaulay's religious 
principles ; and in these, too, we shall find him a 
genuine son of the philosophy of the eighteenth 
century. The reader, however, must take great 
care not to misunderstand us here. We are not 
going to prove Macaulay an infidel ; such a charge 
were simply the very last we should think of 
bringing. What may be called his private re- 



LORD MACAULAY. 129 

ligious feelings, Lord Macaulay never obtruded 
on the world, and we are not going to invade 
them. What we have to do with here is wholly 
and solely the public religious principles of Lord 
Macaulay. These principles, indeed, two words 
shall name for us at once, and these two words 
are — Universal Toleration. In his own language, 
" he is as averse to Laud on the one hand as to 
Praise-God-Barebones on the other;'' as averse to 
the Puritan as to the Catholic, as averse to the 
High Churchman as to the Independent. Exeter 
Hall is to him a place of intolerance ; he sneers 
at its " bray," and speaks with contempt of '' its 
prescriptive right to talk nonsense." In such 
sentiments, it is plain, he is David Hume all 
but in propria persona. He is the supporter of 
an Established Church, but were there no poor 
people, were there only rich people, he would be 
a Voluntary : and, meantime, the true arrangement 
appears to him to be, the Establishment of Epis- 
copacy in England, of Presbyterianism in Scotland, 
and of Eoman Catholicism in Ireland. Withal, 
he is a friend to the Dissenters, and will stand 
up manfully were even a Unitarian attacked. 
(Speech, June 6, 1854.) 

The reader who will take the trouble to ex- 
I 



130 LORD MACAULAY. 

amine the essays on Gladstone on " Church and 
State," and on Eanke's " History of the Popes/' 
will find a host of passages confirmatory of our 
position. He rejoices, for example, "in the im- 
mense strides that we have made, and continually 
make, in mathematics and the sciences," but he 
complains that " with theology the case is very 
different." He says, '' As regards natural religion, 
we are no better off now than Thales or Simo- 
nides." The argument from design was as well 
known by them as by us ; and " the immortality 
of the soul is as indemonstrable now as ever." 
" It is a mistake," he asserts, " to imagine that 
subtle speculations touching the divine attributes, 
the origin of evil, the necessity of human actions, 
the foundation of moral obligation, imply any high 
degree of intellectual culture. Such speculations, 
on the contrary, are, in a peculiar manner, the 
delight of intelligent children and of half-civilized 
men." " But," he goes on to say, " neither is 
revealed religion of the nature of progressive 
science ;" and he remarks, significantly, that 
" Catholic communities have, since the end of the 
sixteenth century, become infidel and become 
Catholic again ; but never have become Protes- 
tant." It seems to him that " we have no security 



LORD MACAULAY. 131 

for the future against the prevalence of any theo- 
logical error that ever has prevailed in time past 
among Christian men ;'' and of the Eoman Catho- 
lic Church he observes : " When we reflect on 
the tremendous assaults which she has survived, 
we find it difficult to conceive in what way she 
is to perish." He thinks of Sir Thomas More and 
his belief in transubstantiation, of Samuel John- 
son and certain of his foibles, of such subtle intel- 
lects as Bayle and Chillingworth becoming, after 
years of scepticism, Catholics, and so, " for these 
reasons, he has ceased to wonder at any vagaries 
of superstition." Very Humian is the remark : 
" It is by no means improbable that zealots may 
have given their lives for a religion which had 
never effectually restrained their vindictive or 
their licentious passions." Here, too, is a touch 
as if by the very pen of the same master ; re- 
marking of sects that, in power, they are bigoted, 
insolent, and cruel, he adds that, " when out of 
power, they find it barbarous to punish men for 
entertaining conscientious scruples about a garb, 
about a ceremony," etc. The same spirit is seen 
in this : " We frequently see inquisitive and rest- 
less spirits, after questioning the existence of a 
Deity, bring themselves to worship a wafer." 



132 LORD MACAULAY. 

Passages of this kind abound in Macaulay, and 
even others of a still more Humian type, but 
these must suffice. 

There is, however, a class of turns in Macaulay 
which have been ascribed to the circumstances of 
his early breeding, but which we are disposed to 
attribute to the same influence of Hume. Of 
these we should wish to give here a sample or 
two. Speaking in his History of Wharton, he 
remarks : " His father was renowned as a distri- 
butor of Calvinistic tracts, and a patron of Cal- 
vinistic divines ; the boy's first years were passed 
amidst Geneva bands, heads of lank hair, up- 
turned eyes, nasal psalmody, and sermons three 
hours long." This description is so applicable to 
the circumstances of Macaulay's own boyhood, 
that surely, if we are to ascribe the use of such 
language to his early breeding, it must be by 
means of the principle, not of action, but of re- 
action. In fact, there cannot be a doubt that the 
feeling at the bottom of such phrases is one not of 
reverence, but of latent derision. Macaulay, in 
truth, has a weakness for what we shall name a 
patrician or aristocratic subrision. He tells us, 
for example, that the French courtiers "sneeringly" 
remarked of their Grand Monarque, that he was 



LORD MACAULAY. 133 

in the right " not to expose to serious risk a life 
invaluable to his people/' The sneer here is un- 
concealed then ; and there can be no doubt that 
when he speaks of being brought to worship a 
wafer, as in a sentence just quoted, he is there, 
too, in the act of enjoying a gentle subrision. 
Now it appears to us that the following sentences 
are constructed on a similar model ; and, if 
allowed to be subrisory, they must be pronounced 
eminently Humian. 

" Those sectaries had no scruple about smiting 
tyrants with the sword of Gideon/' " Here and 
there an Achan had disgraced the good cause by 
stooping to plunder the Canaanites, whom he 
ought only to have smitten/' " Crawford was 
what they called a professor ; his letters and 
speeches are, to use his own phraseology, ex- 
ceeding savoury/' " They invited Amalek and 
Moab to come back and try another chance with 
the chosen people/' " These pious acts, prompted 
by the Holy Spirit, were requited by an untoward 
generation with," etc. " A pious, honest, and 
learned man, but of slender judgment, and half 
crazed by his persevering endeavours to extract 
from Daniel and the Eevelations some informa- 
tion about the Pope and the King of France/' 



134 LORD MACAULAY. 

If these extracts be compared with the quota- 
tions in reference to Wharton and Louis xiv., no 
reader can mistake the true nature of their spirit. 
The turn in the last, indeed, is quite unmistak- 
able without collation, and would hardly satisfy 
Dr. Gumming or the author of the " Coming 
Struggle." We had marked several other passages 
for quotation; but we think that sufficient evi- 
dence has now been led to establish the truth of 
our assertion, that the public religious position of 
Macaulay is very similar to that of David Hume. 
Macaulay, in fact, will not entertain any question 
of religion in any matters of public and general 
application, with the single exception of an 
Established Church ; and, as we have seen, he is 
not solicitous about the special nature of such 
Church, so long as it is simply established by the 
will of the majority. Like Hume, in truth, there 
are two things, in a religious sense, which 
Macaulay cordially hates. Hume names the 
one " superstition '' and the other " enthusiasm.'' 
Of Macaulay's feelings toward the former we 
have already seen enough. His notions of the 
latter are implied in all that he says relative to 
bigots and fanatics. But nowhere are his thoughts 
seen clearer than in his account of George 



LORD MACAULAY. 135 

Fox, the Quaker, or in his description (Eanke s 
"Popes") of a converted tinker, whom the 
Eoman Church, unlike the Protestant, he says, 
would have turned to its own service. In 
these, his cold statement of religious experiences 
reads like an extract from some medical work 
pathologically relating the symptoms and pro- 
gress of some bodily malady. Such things 
involve a process that seems alien to him; for 
the most part, he looks on with disgust and scorn, 
or, at best, with curiosity and compassion. No ; 
all Macaulay's sympathies are with the temporal ; 
and when the subject of religion occurs to be taken 
up, it is simply viewed as one of the other material 
interests. It is very characteristic of him to re- 
mark, that " Catholicism is the most attractive of 
all superstitions," and that " the Jewish religion, 
of all erroneous religions, is the least mischievous." 
In short, when he says of Danby, "His attach- 
ment to Episcopacy and the Liturgy were rather 
political than religious," the dictum, without 
straining and without uncharity, might easily 
receive a wider application. 

Those of our readers who know anything of the 
French philosopher Comte, or of his English dis- 
ciple Buckle, will, we daresay, have already per- 



136 LOKD MACAULAY. 

ceived that the opinions of these " philosophers '* 
are not only similar, but even constitute a natural 
termination to those of Macaulay. They, as is 
weU known, would sneer into annihilation all 
metaphysics and all theology, and would wish to 
see thought restricted to the observation and 
registration of phenomena. Well, Macaulay too 
tal^es his stand by induction, which just means 
the observation and registration of phenomena : 
he too rejects metaphysics ; and if he does not 
wholly reject theology, he restricts it to a province 
certainly of the narrowest. The very law of 
necessary connexion (a phrase borrowed from 
Hume, to whom, however, necessity of connexion 
existed not, but only constancy of conjunction), by 
means of which the Comtists seek to transform 
the manifestations of our intellectual and moral 
faculties into mere links of the same great chain 
of cause and effect which physical things obey, 
seems not without a certain attraction for 
Macaulay also. Talking of our tendency to 
regard the Golden Age as left behind us in the 
past, he says : " This is chiefly to be ascribed to a 
law as certain as the laws which regulate the suc- 
cession of the seasons and the course of the trade- 
winds : it is the nature of man to overrate present 



LOKD MACAULAY. 137 

evil and to underrate present good — to long for 
what lie has not and to be dissatisfied with what 
he has/' 

We should be glad to join issue on several of 
these points, and to discuss them at length, but 
such is not our present object, and here we have 
no sufficient space. We content ourselves with 
saying, for the sake of our own position with the 
reader, that while we do not look on the philo- 
sophy of the eighteenth century with unmingled 
satisfaction, we certainly regard that of Messrs. 
Comte and Buckle with unqualified reprobation 
and contempt. Further, we think that the func- 
tions of government are not of a negative nature 
only (exclusively restricted to the protection of 
person and property), but capable of an affirmative 
application also. Macaulay, indeed, is here in 
reality at variance with himself; for, in regard to 
a national church and a national school, he actually 
concedes to government a function evidently 
affirmative. We, for our part, see no reason — 
and we are sure that Lord Macaulay could not 
have assigned one — why the affirmative function 
should stop there, and are inclined to believe 
that, in this connexion, there is a science (social 
science) opening, of which Lord Macaulay, in his 



138 LOUD MACAULAY. 

own bitter words to Southey, '' liad yet to learn 
the alphabet." Again, we believe that physical 
truth w^ould be an inexplicable and indeed 
meaningless fragment — so much mere purpose- 
less flotsam — were it not there for, and did it not 
terminate in, metaphysical truth. Then religion 
is to us the tap-root of humanity, and all else is 
but nauci, flocci, minimi, pili. Neither can we 
allow that metaphysics, morals, and religion are, 
either severally or collectively, destitute of pro- 
gress. Very far from that, we believe that the 
final cause of the world is neither more nor less 
than such progress, and that history has no theme 
whatever but, intellectually, morally, and re- 
ligiously, the enlargement and enfranchisement of 
the consciousness of man. Progress, however, we 
do not view as, so to speak, fluent extension ; we 
should name it rather a series of consecutive and 
accumulative progresses. The history of civilisa- 
tion is a history of civilisations — a history of higher 
following on lower dispensations ; the tree of exist- 
ence, the Yggdrasil of our Norse forefathers, decays 
as surely as it grows, but it grows as surely as it 
decays, and each new growth is larger, fuller, braver 
than the last. This tree has successively grown up 
and withered down, in India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, 



LORD MACAULAY. 139 

Greece, and Italy ; it is now in full leaf in Eng- 
land, but a thousand years hence it may be bud- 
ding and blossoming elsewhere. 

We have now obtained for ourselves an insight, 
more or less clear, more or less complete, into the 
principles and aim with which Lord Macaulay 
entered on the arena of life ; let us now see how 
he, so accoutred and impelled, bore himself, and 
what were the products of his so guided and 
directed industry. 

When Macaulay left college for London in 1825, 
he carried with him a very complete knowledge of 
the Greek and Latin classics, as well as a compe- 
tent acquaintance with the leading literatures of 
modern Europe. He does not seem to have ever 
attempted to realize to himself an intellectual 
conception of the Greeks or Eomans as human 
beings, and in relation to universal history ; but 
the literary masterpieces of these peoples were 
fairly stored in his excellent memory, where his 
exceedingly sound and discriminating taste had 
well arranged, shelved, and lettered them. His 
knowledge of modern literature was also evidently 
extensive, and, on the whole, exact. The classic 
Italians, and the French writers of the age of 
Louis XIV., he had manifestly studied with great 



140 LORD MA.CAULAY. 

care, and discussed in his own mind with great 
discernment. We have also occasional notices 
from him of German and Spanish authors, and 
even a quotation or two in these languages ; but 
though he had indubitably attained to a very 
considerable and satisfactory conception of the 
main merits of these literatures, still it appears 
probable to us that Macaulay could not have 
justly claimed the title of either a German or a 
Spanish scholar. Macaulay, in fact, was a man 
of great practical perspicacity, and we do not 
believe that he would have willingly carried one 
ounce more weight than was necessary to his 
purpose. We find him, for example, contented 
to remain with but slender mathematical acquire- 
ments ; and nowhere is there the slightest evi- 
dence that he ever troubled his head about Egypt's 
place in universal history, the Hindu Vedas, the 
origin of society in Central Asia, the migration of 
the tribes, or the philological relations of Turan 
and Iran. The preference of Italian and French 
to German and Spanish, then, is in complete har- 
mony with our Humian theory ; and we can easily 
believe that any study of these latter languages re- 
sulted fully as much from the set of the times as from 
expectation of help towards his peculiar object. 



LORD MACAULAY. 141 

But, besides these literary and academic stores, 
even in 1825 Macanlay had already made great 
progress in the study of English history and poli- 
tics, especially during those reigns that were char- 
acterized by the growth and evolution of what are 
named constitutional principles. Indeed, so en- 
grossed is he in this study, that in his very first 
article of any note (Milton, Edin. Rev, 1825), he 
cannot resist the temptation to intercalate an his- 
torical summary. Analogous but more extended 
historical summaries followed in the Hallam, the 
Hampden, the Burleigh, and others. So very 
similar, indeed, are these summaries, and so fre- 
quently do they recur, that one gets to feel a little 
surprise at the favour that allowed even a Mac- 
aulay to insert and re-insert, and yet again insert, 
what was mainly nothing more than the rifacci- 
mento of an old material. 

The History would lead us to suppose, as we 
have already shown, that a certain reaction really 
had taken place in Macaulay against the Calvin- 
ism of his friends. There is no evidence of this, 
however, in the early essays. It is possible, in- 
deed, that the studies and experiences of the 
imiversity may have taught him to regard the 
system of religious thought under his father's 



142 LORD MAC AULA Y. 

roof as biassed and narrow ; but nowhere can we 
find any evidence of a youthful, a poetic, or an 
aristocratic revolt against it. His clear, sound 
judgment sees well where he is placed, and what 
his friends are worth to him ; he remains on the 
best terms with them, he supports their views, he 
makes speeches for them, but still he takes up his 
own position calmly in the centre, as that consti- 
tutional Whig which his historical studies recom- 
mend to him. The same clear, practical judgment 
that has decided his choice leads him again to 
perceive that it is wisest for him, once having 
chosen, to declare himself. Accordingly, he is 
quite open in his avowal that he " would be first 
an Englishman and then a Whig,'' and he takes 
his side in the most public and unhesitating 
fashion. 

The young man, who has such friends and con- 
nexions, who has distinguished himself so much 
at college, who has spoken so well at Abolition 
meetings, who has written such capital articles 
in the Edinlurgh, who is so manifestly a true 
Whig that he knows more about Whig history, 
and can give better expression to Whig principles 
than the very best Whig among them, is not long 
left without public employment. He is made a 



LORD MACAULAY. 143 

Commissioner of Bankruptcy, and so early as 1830 
a seat in Parliament is found for him. He enters 
Parliament at a most important crisis too. The 
great Eeform Bill is in the agonies of gestation, 
and the Whigs are troubled with the most natural 
solicitude. The young man of thirty is too saga- 
cious not to discern all the possibilities of the 
position. He is possessed, withal, of such vigour 
of will as enables him to convert his perceptions 
into deeds. He throws himself, though new to 
the House, completely into the situation. He 
becomes one of the leading supporters of Govern- 
ment. Indeed, his services are soon such that, in 
less than four years, a most lucrative appointment 
is found for him — an appointment so lucrative 
that in three years he is able to return from India, 
where he held it, the recipient of an opulent and 
lordly income. 

Macaulay is not yet thirty-eight, then, and we 
already see how well the aim he set himself has 
thriven with him. His practical experience of 
Parliament and of India is an incalculable gain 
to him in his vocation of historian. All this 
time, too, his studies on the one concentrated 
subject have never slackened. We can trace 
their progress in the series of essays already more 



144 LORD MAC AUL AY. 

than once referred to. Indeed, these studies seem 
thoroughly ripe now, and even the execution of 
his design largely accomplished. "What a happy 
prospect gilds all the west for him at the early 
age of thirty-eight ! — he has wealth, he has posi- 
tion, he has honour, he has even in a goodly state 
of forwardness the one work which was to be 
" the business and the pleasure of his life." 
Naught remains for him but, in the midst of 
leisure, in the midst of all the agremens of the 
most choice society in the world, a member of 
Parliament even, for he may make the duties 
light, that he finish his work, that he build the 
temple, and transform to enclosed chapels those 
gorgeous Olives and magnificent Hastingses. Ac- 
cordingly such is the position that we see him 
assume for the remainder of his days. And in 
such position he is able to do such services to the 
Whigs, and gain such honour in the eyes of his 
fellow-countrymen, that in 1857 a patent of nobi- 
lity is conferred on him. But, alas ! the labours, 
that wore now the look of pastime and recreation 
rather than drudgery and penance, and to the 
termination of which he might, so far as his age 
was concerned, look not too presumptuously for- 
ward, were destined to be snapped asunder in the 



LORD MAC AULA Y. 145 

midst, and remain for ever a fragment merely. 
Gn the 28th day of December 1859 (just fifty- 
nine years of age), Lord Macaulaydied, and the con- 
tinuation of Hume remains itself to be continued. 
Some of his too ardent admirers have not 
scrupled to claim for Lord Macaulay the first 
place as orator, poet, essayist, and historian. This 
claim, so put, we think insupportable. These 
admirers themselves describe the speeches of Lord 
Macaulay as but spoken essays ; and they give, 
besides, such an account of the deficiency of his 
voice and the stiffness of his action as demon- 
strates the nullity of their own claim, so far as the 
orator is concerned. For our part we find the 
speeches to read exceedingly well, and we can- 
not admit that they have only the character of 
spoken essays. On the contrary, we find in them 
not the mere fluent continuousness of writing, but 
the energetic interruptedness, and, as it were, the 
successive hammer-strokes of actual speech. On 
this head it will sufl&ce to say, however, that they 
are well- worded pieces of excellent generalization 
and clear judgment. The Whigs, though pro- 
bably sometimes quivering with misgivings that 
he was going too far, must on the whole, have 
been much enlightened and very much gratified 

K 



146 LORD MACAULAY. 

by those admirable expositions of their own prin- 
ciples. 

In regard to the " Lays of Ancient Eome/' the 
Times writes thus : — '' As a poet, at a time when 
it was supposed that nothing new could be in- 
vented, he struck out a style, the enchantment of 
which is felt by all ages and all conditions alike, 
which has no prototype in ancient, no parallel in 
modern times ; which unites the simplicity of our 
ancient ballads with the rich images and stirring 
dialogue of the epic, often sweetly descending to an 
idyllic character, reminding us of the happier pas- 
sages of Theocritus." The authority is unimpeach- 
able and the testimony clear, nevertheless we can- 
not help thinking that both the Times and Lord 
Macaulay have made a sad mistake here. It is 
our deliberate belief, in short, that the " Lays of 
Ancient Eome" are — bearing in mind that their 
author is a man of the quickest intellect, and of 
the most cultivated taste — not poetry, but, so far 
as we understand the word, doggrel. Macaulay, in 
talking of his Mulgraves, Eochesters, Montagues, 
Dorsets, etc., laments that their poetry should have 
been preserved to mislead us only in forming a 
judgment of their characters and talents otherwise. 
We think it very possible that some future histo- 
rian may repeat Macaulay's remark, and of Mac- 



LORD MACAULAY. 147 

aulay's own case. Again : it is of Addison's poetry 
that our essayist himself remarks : " Ever since 
the time of Pope there has been a glut of lines of 
this sort, and we are now as little disposed to 
admire a man for being able to write them as for 
being able to write his name/' Even so ; and a 
fortiori (since the Percy Ballads) in regard to the 
" Lays of Ancient Eome." up 

" Got brave Dick Turpin, 
And he swore by the roass 
That he would ride to York city, 
All on his steed Black Bess !" 

Positively such stuff as this may, in certain 
circumstances, be bearable. But, the brave 
Me-zen-ti-us ! and the brave Ho-ra-ti-us ! are 
worse than the bagpipes as described by Shake- 
speare. We hear at once the true Whitechapel 
skirl, and in such barbarous union with the sacred 
names of another world and of other associations 
that we involuntarily stop our ears, fain to ex- 
clude a positive pain. For it is to be recollected 
that the hearing of some ballads bawled in 
Whitechapel is said to have suggested these ex- 
traordinary hermaphrodites. This origin, whether 
feigned or true, is certainly most apposite. 

The truth is, in an age that regarded poetry 
so high as ours does, the self-complacence of a 



148 LORD MACAULAY. 

successful author, who could do almost every- 
thing well, and who had written prize poems in 
his youth, could not resist a clutch at the bays of 
the bard ; but he signally missed, and we only 
wish that he himself had had the opportunity, in 
the case of somebody else, to point the moral. 
For us, to be sure, there is some consolation in 
the inimitable sentence of the Times ; we should 
be sorry to forget that sweet descent to Theocritus 
and the idyllic. We must do ourself the justice, 
however, to say one word on " Ivry.'' This is a 
piece of true merit, full of spirit and energy. Had 
Macaulay preserved no other poem but this, though 
it could never have sufficed to entitle him to the 
name of poet, it would have been there, a proof 
of versatility, and it would always have been 
taken into account in every estimate of the essay- 
ist and historian. 

These words bring us to the true functions of 
Macaulay, and to the true scenes of his triumphs. 

The essays, as we have seen, are often written, 
so to speak, in aid of the History, and assume, 
for the most part, the character of preliminary 
draughts, or of collateral complements. Some 
among them display, as reviews, a rare excellence 
of a technical kind. An admirable sample of 



LOED MACAULAY. 149 

such excellence is the "Southey '' (1830) ; indeed, 
a more perfect business article we do not recollect 
ever to have read. Eeviewing, in Macaulay's 
own words, is certainly " to a critic an easy and 
habitual act " in this case. The " Eobert Mont- 
gomery '' is, to be sure, quite as business-like ; 
but the game there comes too thick on us ; it is 
a battue we assist at ; sport becomes slaughter, 
and we cease to have interest in it. But in the 
" Southey,'' the coups d'adresse and the toztrs de 
force are captivating beyond comparison. How 
the poor laureate must have writhed under the 
dexterous touches of this finest and supplest of 
whips ! Macaulay has here a subject entirely 
within his range; his style is now full-fledged 
too, and his manner perfect. There is, perhaps, 
a little fine malice towards the Tory poet lurking 
in the heart of the Whig reviewer ; at all events 
he feels that the Tory poetry of politics, as ex- 
pounded by Southey, is powerless against his 
own Whig prose, and he marches to battle with 
the gayest confidence. Not one word is ever 
wasted, not a single sentence falls in vain. Points 
and edges glitter everywhere; incisions gape to 
every stroke, and punctures follow to every 
thrust. Verily this is elastic writing, vigorous, 



150 LORD MACAULAY. 

rapid, true. What irony, what sarcasm, what 
fine derision perfectly cut into words ! " Mr. 
Southey," he remarks, " brings to the task two 
faculties which were never, we believe, vouch- 
safed in measure so copious to any human being 
— the faculty of believing without a reason, and 
the faculty of hating without a provocation." 
How finely he says too : — '' Government is to 
Mr. Southey one of the fine arts : he judges of a 
theory, of a public measure, of a religion or a 
political party, of a peace or a war, as men judge 
of a picture or a statue, by the effect produced on 
his imagination : a chain of association is to him 
what a chain of reasoning is to other men, and 
what he calls his opinions are, in fact, merely his 
tastes." Expression here is surely in perfect ade- 
quacy with the thought ; and all these exquisite 
little turns are weighty as bullets and precious 
as gold. Then, withal, he is so true and discri- 
minating, truer, perhaps, and more discriminating 
in his praise than in his blame : when he ap- 
plauds, he approves himself such a critic as even 
Southey himself must accept with entire satis- 
faction. 

Speaking of Mr. Southey's poems he says : — 
" The short pieces are worse than Pye's and as 



LORD MACAULAY. 151 

bad as Gibber's/' '' The longer pieces/' he con- 
tinues, " though full of faults, are nevertheless very 
extraordinary productions/' He doubts " greatly 
whether they will be read fifty years hence ;" but 
has no doubt that, if read, '' they will be admired/' 
How admirably true, telling, and trenchant, every 
one who knows anything of the subject must 
feel this criticism ! In this most felicitous paper 
panegyric itself has the effect of the most cutting 
satire, as where the reviewer says of the " Life of 
Nelson :" — " It would not in all literary history 
be easy to find a more exact hit between wind 
and water/' Then how relentlessly the Whig 
constitutionalist insists on holding up to the 
theoretic dreams of the Tory poet his bundles of 
statistical tables and his rolls of mortality bills I 
Southey has not the ghost of a chance with him ; 
the facts are so strong that they need advance 
only in the lightest badinage, the easiest persi- 
flage. Mr. Southey, the reviewer says, resembles 
Milton's Satan, who contrived to travel roimd the 
world "always in the dark ;" and he adds — and 
in the addition we see the rapier home — " it is not 
everybody who could have so dexterously avoided 
blundering on the daylight in the course of a 
journey to the antipodes/' The whole essay 



152 LORD MACAULAY. 

abounds in the most exquisite expressions, the 
most vivid and effective figures. There is wit, 
allusion, illustration ; no element fails. All the 
arts of this species of composition are present 
in profusion, and Macaulay approves himself a 
finished craftsman. 

Macaulay's longest essay, and perhaps the most 
elaborate, is the " Bacon." The power of writing 
has now come to full maturity with him; nay, 
we are not sure but that the fulness is excessive 
and runs over ; we are not sure but that the art 
has run away with the artist. Has anybody not 
on business ever read this essay without mor^Bj 
than one of those intercalatory relaxations fami- 
liarly known as skips ? The facts in Bacon's life 
are few, and Macaulay tells us nothing new in 
regard to them. Still the river of words flows on 
copiously, endlessly. This is discussed and that 
is discussed, and not a stitch is dropped, and 
the whole subject must be exhaustively treated. 
And sure enough it is exhaustively treated ; the 
teeth of wolf never stripped a bone more exhaus- 
tively clean. Let the reader in search of proof 
turn only to the discussion of the question of 
philosophy that terminates the essay, and which 
really a page or two might have contained, and 



LOKD MACAULAY. 153 

he will find that it takes up about twice the space 
of the essay he is now reading. This excessive 
copiousness is decidedly a blot, then. Still, the 
living, leafy, wide-stretching boughs into which 
the writer's art transforms the mere dead and 
fragmentary fallen twigs of truth are wonderful, 
and we are kept in continual admiration of the 
constant unexceptionable writing, the constant 
interesting pictures, the constant luminous good 
sense, and the constant appearance of research. 

The '' Samuel Johnson" (1831) is one of 
Macaulay's most celebrated and characteristic 
essays ; and certainly perhaps there is no more 
vivid, no more graphic, no more racy piece of 
writing in the language. The style is terse, clear, 
keen, while there are a fulness and a rapid con- 
tinuance of utterance that hurry us triumphantly 
along with the stream of expression. Still we 
cannot help seeing that it is a tale dressed up, 
that effect is aimed at, and that effect alone is 
aimed at. The truth of the matter is evidently 
not by any means of vital importance to the 
writer ; not that he despises, or at all wishes to 
neglect truth, but just because his object has no 
present relation with truth. In fact, the aim here 
is not instruction at all ; there is no thought of a 



154 LORD MACAULAY. 

lesson ; the wish is amusement, entertainment, 
interest only. The desire, too, is accomplished, 
for the essay is as successful as any series of dis- 
solving views. It is bright, glittering, brilliant, 
but — we must say it — it is shallow. It deals 
with the outside only— with the hull, the husk, 
the poor scrofula- scarred body, and not with the 
soul of Johnson. How different the Johnson of 
Carlyle ! There it is not the squalid, unsweet 
giant in dirty linen, gobbling and slobbering, with 
straining eyeballs, over his victuals, that we see. 
No ; there it is the humble pious heart, the 
strong sense, the understanding solid, weighty as 
granite ; or again, it is the great doubt-riven soul 
that would have peace in God and a world of far 
other interests than the pettinesses of time. 

Macaulay, in fact, has no business with such a 
soul as this of Johnson. Instead of seeing it, 
understanding it, loving it, he maunders about 
Johnson's credulity in matters spiritual, and his 
incredulity in matters temporal, and enjoys his 
own enlightened subrision over " superstition.'' 
We have here, indeed, an excellent specimen of 
what is one of Macaulay's main recommendations 
to the general reader — a delight in gathering and a 
power of painting personal peculiarities. Mac- 



LORD MAC AULAY. 155 

aulay is never more at home than in such scandal : 
the eating, drinking, and clothing of men, their 
mistresses, their warts, their bandy legs, or their 
red noses — Macaulay has, in such curiosities, ab- 
solutely the furore of a collector. Now such 
things were so abundant in poor Johnson that 
Macaulay saw nothing else. As Johnson was a 
Tory indeed, Macaulay did not care to see any- 
thing else. For that Macaulay yielded to the 
bias of party is as certain as that Johnson himself 
so yielded. He (Macaulay) talks of the Tories at 
times as if they were wolves. " The howl,'' he 
says, " which the whole pack set up for prey and 
for blood appalled even him who had aroused and 
unchained them." It is this same party influence 
that leads him to write with such partiality of 
Addison and such hatred of Pope. He labours 
under a jaundice of this sort, so deep, indeed, that 
even the poor dwarfed, deformed, diseased body of 
Pope seems to excite feelings of detestation in 
him ; and he speaks of it as legitimate game for 
Addison, had Addison chosen to revenge himself 
for the lines on Atticus. Macaulay is, if possible, 
more unjust to Johnson than to Pope, however ; 
he sneers at his works, talks of them passing into 
oblivion, and seems quite to ignore all the great 



156 LORD MACAULAY. 

qualities of that true Englishman. If he could see 
nothing in Johnson's criticisms, or in his bio- 
graphies — if the melancholy wisdom of a lifetime, 
which is the burthen of " Easselas," had no worth 
for him — if he had no gratitude for the Dictionary ' 
even, surely he might have recollected that this 
was the man who wrote the letter to Chesterfield, 
a piece of manliness and of unsurpassed felicity of 
expression, that will be alive, we doubt not, when 
even " Clive" and " Warren Hastings" have ceased 
to interest. 

We would not have the reader suppose, how- 
ever, that we undervalue the two celebrated 
essays just mentioned. The History has absorbed 
and superseded some of the very best of the 
others ; but these still remain in their own entire 
and undiminished proportions, the most pro- 
minent, the most attractive, and, probably with- 
out exception, the most universally read of all 
Macaulay's writings. 

Beyond all doubt there are no themes in the 
history of the world better adapted for the peculiar 
pen of Macaulay than the characters and deeds of 
these, the two most famous, or infamous, of all 
our Indian proconsuls. It is to the imagination 
that Macaulay prefers to address himself; and 



LORD MACAULAY. 157 

here certainly, if anywhere, there were materials 
enough to aid him in such a purpose. In the 
background we have the vague splendour of the 
East ; the snows of mightier hills ascend ; the 
beams of a mightier sun pour forth ; strange 
cupolas loom through the haze of heat, and 
minarets of other creeds glance ; palaces of marble 
rise with chambers where the air is heavy with 
the pomp of hangings, and opulent with the lustre 
of jewelry and gold. In the foreground, heroes, 
single-handed, scatter armies, or burst into the 
secret treasure-houses of Arabian story. Nor is 
the thrill wanting that these are Englishmen, 
and that the name of England has been made a 
name of terror and fascination by them in every 
town and hamlet of these enchanted regions. 

In these gorgeous essays, the style corresponds 
admirably with the material on which it is em- 
ployed, and with the startling events which it 
relates. It is . dyed in a thousand colours ; it 
glitters with a thousand points ; and the swift- 
ness of its speed is as the rush of the eager victor 
through the broken wreck of the terrified foe that 
flees. Still this is the highest praise that can be 
awarded these essays ; it is not for any quality 
of thought that they are valuable ; they are 



158 LOED MACAULA.Y. 

scenic merely. Indeed, we fear the lesson they 
teach is of no good tendency ; the imagination is 
kindled up into admiration of material riches and 
material power, while actions black with perfidy 
or red with blood are allowed, in all this earthly 
and earthy splendour, almost to hide themselves. 
We fear that such men as Clive and Hastings 
have been too often taken as exemplars by our 
countrymen in the East ; that hatred to our 
name, the deeper for suppression, results ; and 
that for all this, the essayist, who preferred an 
audience of the imagination to one of reason, is 
very seriously to blame. 

But the book of Macaulay is undoubtedly his 
History. Its foundation has been laid as far back 
as the very first stirrings of literary ambition — a 
lifetime of study, a lifetime of experience had 
collected the materials, and a lifetime of labour 
had been employed on the work. It is a national 
loss that it remains unfinished, for never perhaps 
were theme and historian so well adapted to each 
other ; and never perhaps had historian manifest- 
ed a similar amount, as well of concentration of 
design as of continuousness of preparation. The 
theme was the constitutional history of England ; 
and HaUam himself had no superiority over 



fe 



LORD MACAULAY. 159 

Macaulay in clear recognition of the true consti- 
tutional principles. There was here a certain 
groundwork of reason and philosophy, then, to 
impart unity and coherency to the whole ; and to 
this groundwork of philosophy the workman was 
thoroughly equal. But, in addition, there were a 
hundred elements, for the elaboration of which it 
was precisely this workman that possessed the 
necessary skill. There were marches, and pro- 
gresses, and processions, and the fierce tides of 
battle. There were parliaments, and the fights of 
parties, the reasons pro and the reasons con, and 
the triumphant tellings of the ayes and noes. 
Manners there were to paint and characters to 
draw, containing both of them an inexhaustible 
store of those salient peculiarities that constitute 
the quaint, the odd, the curious, the original. In 
short, here was a theme that required precisely 
such an historian ; and here was an historian that 
required precisely such a theme. We really be- 
lieve that there does not exist in any language 
reading more captivating than this History. The 
interest of Carlyle's French Revolution is cer- 
tainly at times infinitely more intense, but one 
cannot get rid of a feeling of a certain interrupt- 
edness, a certain inequality in that work, while 



160 LORD MAC AULAY. 

the march of Macaulay is never either accelerated 
or retarded. 

We should name the style in Macaulay's earlier 
writings, a transparent but flushed rapidity. But 
as regards the style of the History, while the 
transparency has been allowed to remain, and in 
greater perfection than before, the rapidity has 
been mitigated and the flush removed. What 
was transparent but flashed rapidity is now 
transparent complacent fluency. The river has 
reached the plain, and gently subsides into a wide 
smilingness of flow, as if grateful for the broad 
ease it feels. 

If such was the style, the mental attributes of 
Macaulay, now mellow in maturity, were equally 
well adapted to the task. There was a judgment 
tamed into the measure of success by its very 
circumspection, its very ascription to the general 
philosophy of the eighteenth century — a judgment 
which, within this range, was luminously clear and 
sharply precise. There was a memory eminently 
retentive, ready, and suggestive, stored, too, with 
material, teeming with illustration, prompt with 
allusion. There was a fancy exceedingly vivid, 
quick, and fertile. It was a source of facility and 
success, too, that so much had been already done, 



LORD MAC AULA Y. 161 

that it was a more than thrice-told tale that was 
in question, that nothing goaded to overspeed, that 
all conduced to the adoption of the calm, the 
leisurely, the placid. Accordmgly a result so 
splendid has been produced that its incompletion 
will remain the lament of our latest literature. 
" In lenocinio commendationis dolor est manus, cum 
id ageret, extinctce." 

/it is not to be supposed, however, that Macaulay 
has no faults ; such a consummation is not for 
humanity. Faults he has, and great ones, up 
from mere qualities of style to attributes of intel- 
lect. In style, for example, despite his many 
true merits, Macaulay cannot be regarded as the 
very highest master. A nature so remarkably 
facile, adroit, and quick as his found no difficulty 
in appropriating the lesson, taught by so many 
contemporaries, of a more living picturesqueness 
and of a more natural reality in writing. That 
this is an age of photography holds as true of the 
domain of the pen as of that of the pencil ; and 
Macaulay yielded like others to the fascination 
of the new trick. His deepest sympathies, never- 
theless, are with the writers of the eighteenth 
century, and theirs was the style which his judg- 
ment, at bottom, really approved. That style he 

L 



162 LORD MAC AULA Y. 

might quicken with measures, or freshen with 
colours, borrowed from the new ; but it was that 
style that, in the main, should still be his. Accord- 
ingly he abounds in the stock metaphor, the stock 
transition, the stock equipoise, the stock rhetoric, 
the stock expedients generally of Addison, Eobert- 
son, Goldsmith, Smollett, but especially David 
Hume. Phrases analogous to '' sinks into insig- 
nificance" are common with him ; he constantly 
tells us of men of " parts," that so and so had 
"parts ;" and he speaks of "the nerves of the 
mind." We can have, by oversight, even such a 
sentence as this from him : " Though his wasted 
and suffering body could hardly move without 
support — he flew to London." On the whole, the 
style of Macaulay is one rather of culture than 
creation. Earely do we find in it any of those 
peculiarly delicate, almost evanescent turns by 
which the new thought of an original writer 
announces itself. 

Another fault of Macaulay, begun probably 
under the influence of Hume, and increased by 
Parliamentary experience, is the tediousness with 
which he expatiates on the pros and cons of party. 
He is never better pleased than when he gets the 
two parties on " the floor of the House," and has 



i 



LORD MACAULAY. 163 

an opportunity of conjecturally cataloguing all the 
motives and opinions, probable or possible, on the 
one side and the other. This is a trick of Hume's 
too, but Macaulay feels absolutely in his element 
here, and cannot persuade himself to quit but 
with the flush of triumph over the majority of 
the ayes and the minority of the noes. 

Macaulay seems, and is generally reckoned, a 
great master of portrait-painting. So far as 
striking epithets and sharp well-defined predi- 
cation are concerned, Macaulay certainly deserves 
the praise. The words applied do indeed seem so 
trenchant, that the man, we are tempted to believe, 
must be cut out by them ; and very often the 
person, at all events, is cut out by them. Johnson, 
Horace Walpole, James i., James ii., William ill., 
and some others, are certainly actually seen by the 
reader. William iii., indeed, is not only seen, 
but even, perhaps, understood. But this is not 
the case with the characters generally. Those 
Sunderlands, Arlingtons, Cliffords, Ashley s, Mon- 
tagues, Eussells, Hamiltons, etc. etc., have all of 
them been successively and individually intro- 
duced to us, and with the most brilliantly specific 
language; still we find that they all retreat, as 
we leave them, into a vague distance, where they 



164 LOKD MACAULAY. 

become more and more shadowy, and finally 
disappear. We have not, after all, seen what 
manner of men they were ; these sharp and telling 
predicates gave ns them in pieces only, and it is 
in vain we seek to find them coherent in a whole. 
How different Carlyle ! One word, and we have 
Eobespierre, or Mirabeau, or Danton, or Calonne, 
or Vergniaud, and we never lose them. They are 
men and realities to ns for ever, and not mere 
bundles of qualities artfully stuffed out by brilliant 
predication. This is the difference of art. Carlyle 
seeks to seize his man in the very centre of his 
nature, in that one quality that harmonizes all the 
varieties and diversities of his actions. Macaulay, 
by collecting all these varieties and diversities ah 
extra, seeks to put together a figure which, unpro- 
vided with this central and uniting knot, falls all 
abroad in pieces again. The stupid phrase, " such 
is the inconsistency of human nature," which 
occurs so frequently in Macaulay, is, in reality, 
only a consolation addressed to himself on a 
dimly-felt failure in construing of the kind alluded 
to. " The character of Harley," says Macaulay, 
" is to be collected from innumerable panegyrics 
and lampoons ; from the works and the private 
correspondence of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Prior, 



LORD MACAULAY. 165 

and Bolingbroke, and from multitudes of such^ 
works as 'Ox and Bull/ 'The High German 
Doctor/ and the ' History of Robert Powell, the 
Puppet Showman.' " This we believe to be evi- 
dence crucially decisive of the truth of our judg- 
ment here. It is perfectly plain from these words, 
that Macaulay sought to construct Harley out of 
a thousand piecemeal materials gathered from 
without. In this way, indeed, a figure (but in 
perpetual danger of instant dissolution) may be 
pieced together, but never an actual human char- 
acter realized to thought. Such human character, 
instantly foimd in what it says itself, is seldom or 
never found in what is said of it. And this is the 
secret of Carlyle's art : he searches for the one 
look, the one gesture, the one act, the one word 
that gives ingress to the inner whole, and never 
troubles himself to gather from without the scat- 
tered beams of manifestation, knowing well that 
no sheaf, however large, collected in that way, 
wdll ever enable him to restore the original 
luminary. 

But if it be thus with the characters of 
Macaulay, an analogous inexactitude frequently 
accompanies his statements of fact. And here it 
is the celebrated descriptive chapter which will 



166 LORD MACAULAY. 

best illustrate our views. The subject of that 
chapter is eminently suited to Macaulay, both as 
regards his outward execution and his inward 
habit of thought. As regards the former, he had 
to describe contrasts (in reference to our own 
times) adapted to interest and pleasingly surprise 
the very shallowest faculties, while, as regards the 
latter, the burthen of the story was progress, 
moral and intellectual progress. But what a re- 
markable easiness and indifference of temper he 
manifests in the collecting and selecting of his 
materials ! The most of them are collected from 
writers fifty or sixty years later than the period 
described ; and the most of these writers are 
novelists. His one great authority for a very large 
portion of the contents of that chapter is un- 
questionably Roderick Random, The incidents 
of travelling, the state of the roads, the highway- 
men, the tricks of London, the squire, the curate, 
are all to be found there. And certainly it is 
quite true that in the novels of Smollett and 
Fielding there . is, as Thackeray observes, a very 
great amount of historical truth " in solution." 
Still, Macaulay has taken this observation a great 
deal too much au pied de la lettre, and it is simply 
ridiculous to put up Orson Topehall, a prey to all 



LORD MACAU LAY. 167 

the rascality of London, as the normal English 
squire of the day. Still more ridiculous is it to 
represent the curate Shuffle, whom Eoderick 
Eandom finds drinking, smoking, and fiddling in 
the alehouse, as the true type of the priest of that 
time. Would we be historically accurate should we 
assume Sir Pitt Crawley to represent the baronet- 
age, and Lord Verisopht the peerage of our own 
days ? Out of the smells of the Thames and the 
Serpentine, out of the painted harlots who, morning 
and evening, infest Eegent Street, and out of the 
skittle- sharpers, and hundreds the like, of whom 
we hear daily in the newspapers, would it not be 
easy to furbish up a picture of these days as 
piquant and racy, but at the same time quite as 
fallacious as Macaulay's representation of the 
times of our ancestors ? 

The reader, we daresay, recollects the descrip- 
tion of the English traveller in the Highlands, 
rising in the morning from the bare earth, blind 
with smoke, mad with itch, etc. : Macaulay tells 
us himself the source from which he derives all 
these and other extraordinary particulars. In a 
note he says : '' Almost all these circumstances 
are taken from Burt's letters ; for the tar I am 
indebted to Cleland's poetry." His manner of 



168 LOKD MACAULAY. 

working is here evident, then : the statements 
of a single writer are conclusive to him. The 
evidence of a single witness is accepted as true, 
and not only as regards the particular facts to 
which that witness speaks, but in a generalized 
application that infinitely exceeds and transcends 
the testimony. Then an accidental notice, in 
some forgotten verses, of tar seen on some indi- 
vidual Highlander, is eagerly accepted, and affixed 
as a general characteristic, not necessarily for its 
truth, but simply for the additional spice and 
point it lends to the story. We see here, indeed, 
another great distinction between Macaulay and 
Carlyle. In regard to any character, scene, action, 
or event, Carlyle strives, nay, we may say, con- 
vulses himself (so earnest is he) to attain to the 
picture, while Macaulay, for his part, is content, 
in such circumstances to attain to a picture. This 
difference between these writers is conclusively 
distinct. Macaulay again is certainly always 
diligent ; he reads and excerpts indefatigably ; but 
he does not, like Carlyle, spend days and nights 
in thought as to what is to be believed, as to how 
the matter really stood. Both have studied the 
same materials, and it is eminently characteristic 
of both that, in regard to the battle of Dunbar) to 



LORD MACAULAY. 169 

take but a small instance, while Macanlay ad- 
heres to the old picturesque story about Cromwell 
thanking the Lord for the Scots leaving the 
high ground, Carlyle, by dint of research, endless 
sifting, and accurate personal inspection, has real- 
ized for us a new, and true, and infinitely more 
picturesque " drove" of Dunbar. Another differ- 
ence between these writers is that Carlyle pos- 
sesses dramatic art in very great perfection, while 
in this respect Macaulay is largely deficient. 
The latter is undoubtedly entitled to the praise, 
ascribed by Carlyle to Hume, of " epic clearness," 
but it is Carlyle himself who can alone lay claim 
to the greater praise of dramatic intensity. The 
fall of Lomenie de Brienne, and that of Eobe- 
spierre are really very complete dramas. But the 
most important contrast between Carlyle and 
Macaulay lies in their immensely different intel- 
lectual point of view. Macaulay ignores the 
metaphysical and spiritual, and seeks to surround 
himself by a well understood and well arranged 
temporal. He stands as strongly by the Philo- 
sophy of the Conditioned as Sir William Hamilton 
himself : it is as clear to him as to this philo- 
sopher that the unconditioned extremes are 
mutually contradictory, and he will not waste his 



170 LORD MACAULAY. 

time on them. The supernatural element is a 
problem quite beyond us ; and he, for his part, 
will content himself with this truth, that the 
really best life for this world is the best life for 
the next world also. How different Carlyle ! 
The void in that wild longing heart, no condi- 
tioned, no mere temporality, how wide and splen- 
did soever, could for a moment fill. No ; his 
eyes are Godwards, and his soul athirst for the 
ampler ether of the other side. 

But we must hasten to make an end. In con- 
clusion, then, we may say of Macaulay that be his 
shortcomings what they may, he has completely 
realized his own ideal. He says himself : 
" The diligence, the accuracy, and the judgment 
of Hallam, united to the vivacity and the colour- 
ing of Southey — a History of England written 
throughout in this manner would be the most 
fascinating book in the language : it would be 
more in request at the circulating libraries than 
the last novel." This was written in 1835, 
and accurately foretold the fortune of his own 
History twenty years later. Yes ; Macaulay 
eminently possessed — and again we use his own 
words — " the art of writing what people will like 
to read ; he rejects all but the attractive parts of 



LORD MACAULAY. 171 

his subject ; he keeps only what is in itseK amus- 
ing, or what can be made so by the artifice of his 
diction." He cannot originate, he cannot create, 
but he disposes admirably, and has a marvellous 
power of what the French call the mise en scene. 
In subtlety, depth, fertility, in spontaneity of 
thought, he is infinitely behind his own great 
prototype Hume. To the solidity, the compre- 
hensiveness, the completeness, the immensity of 
range of Gibbon, he can have no pretension. To 
the earnestness, the intensity, the vision of Carlyle, 
he is equally a stranger. With men like these 
he is simply incommensurable. His place is not 
among the kings ; he holds no throne ; he sits 
not by the sides of Thucydides and Tacitus. In 
the annals of the world we know but one mate 
for him — a mate that he would disdain, perhaps, 
but a mate that if here inferior is there superior ; 
— this mate is Sallust. 



DE QUINCEY AND COLEEIDGE 
UPON KANT. 

In the remarks of these two English writers on 
the German philosophers, especially Kant, there 
lies the possibility of certain lights, not unillus- 
trative as well of the one side as of the other, and 
not unlikely, perhaps, to be of interest to the 
general reader. It is this reader's ear we would 
win, then, on this subject, for a few pages. 

From De Quincey we quote at once as fol- 
lows : — 

"Kant is a dubious exception. . . . Within 
his own circle none durst tread but he. But 
that circle was limited. He was called by one 
who weighed him well, the Alles-zermalmender, 
the world- shattering Kant. He could destroy ; 
his intellect was essentially destructive. He had 
no instincts of creation or restoration within his 
ApoUyon mind . . . [he] exulted in the pro- 



DE QUINCE Y AND COLEEIDGE UPON KANT. 173 

spect of absolute and ultimate annihilation. . . . 
The King of Prussia [was] obliged to level his 
state -thunders, and terrify him in his advance, 
else I am persuaded that Kant would have form- 
ally delivered atheism from the professors 
chair." ^ 

Now, on matters German, De Quincey is 
usually admitted to be a master, and it is hardly 
indirectly that he himself claims as much ; never- 
theless, there is not one of these words that de- 
serves not to be negatived. Eeally, throughout 
his whole life, the thoughts that lay nearest to 
Kant were God, Immortality, and rree-will. 
These to him {luith Ontology, but only as fore- 
court) constituted Metaphysic ; and to re-establish 
metaphysic was his single aim. To talk of Kant 
exulting in the prospect of annihilation, " ab- 
solute and ultimate annihilation,'' is even less 
relevant than to talk of Galileo rejoicing in the 
unmoved centrality of the earth ; while there 
are few names in our mouths the addition to 
which of '' Atheist" were a greater blasphemy. 
We must look closer, however, at the circum- 
stances of the charge. 

There is only a single characteristic in Kant 

1 De Quincey's Works, Hogg's edition, vol. ii. pp. 162, 163. 



174 DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE 

which, on the religious side, has been made a 
handle of attack ; and that is the undoubted 
supremacy which he awards to morality. Hence 
probably the imputation of Pelagianism, as like- 
wise, later, that of Eationalism. Morality with 
Kant, however, has a width of meaning that is 
quite peculiar to himself. To him it means that 
single principle which realized, as alluded to 
already, the interests of metaphysic. Nay, it was 
morality — the world oi practice — that explained 
to him the lacunce in these respects in the world 
of theory (knowledge), and exhibited these lacunce 
themselves as a provision of the most indispens- 
able purpose. It is no wonder then, that Kant 
valued or overYsibied morality. 

As for Pelagianism, Eationalism, etc., they 
concern Theology, and shall be left aside. We 
may remark only that we have not yet found 
anywhere in Kant a single word that tends not 
to re-establish religion, and knit us closer to 
Christianity. From the very surface of his writ- 
ings, indeed, Kant is seen to form even a con- 
trast to the Voltaires, and others the like, with 
whom such information as De Quincey's would 
rashly class him. Kant is no mocker, no French- 
man of the eighteenth century, with a blind pre- 



UPON KANT. 175 

judice against the religion which he has seen — 
and because he has so seen it — outraged around 
him. Kant was piously brought up both by 
parents and instructors, and religion, with all 
that concerned religion, remained to him through 
life the central interest ; nor was it aught but 
venom and vulgarity that brought the charge of 
heresy against him. 

As regards the allusion to the King of Prussia, 
we may say, indeed, that either Schubert's account 
of the transaction, or that of Eosenkranz, as con- 
tained in their united edition of the works of 
Kant, or Kant's own (in his preface to the Streit 
der Facultdten), will alone suffice to demonstrate 
at once the absurdity of De Quincey's misrepre- 
sentation. This is, indeed, to give a strange 
validity to the miserable industry of Hilmer, 
Hermes, Waltersdorf, and company. This is 
strangely to invert the true character of that 
contemptible attack on the aged Kant in 1794, 
on which an indignant Germany has ever since 
called shame. We are not required to say more 
here. Kant's own letter to the King is at once a 
triumphant defence and an overwhelming rebuke. 
And while Eosenkranz, as regards this matter, 
and in reference to Christianity, directly styles 



176 DE QUmCEY AND COLERIDGE 

Kant " the Eestorer of Faith," Schubert, in the 
same connexion, writes thus : — 

"Kant's candid inquiries and pure intentions 
were clouded, perverted, disgraced ; and the 
noblest and surest friend of existing monarchical 
institutions, the veritable reverer of the Christian 
religion and its blessed influence on the elevation 
of the people and moral ennoblement . . . was 
accused as a scorner of Christianity and an enemy 
of the people's welfare." 

De Quincey had ample means of information 
within his power, and it is quite impossible to 
account for his travesty of this Hilmer and 
Hermes affair into a compulsory resort to his 
bolts on the part of the Prussian Jupiter against 
the attacks of an atheistic ApoUyon. To compare 
these several allegations, indeed, with the reputa- 
tion and pretensions of De Quincey is to set 
ourselves adrift on a sea of speculation where 
there are many feelings besides satisfaction and 
repose. 

But, as intimated, there is more to strike us 
still than these curiously absurd imputations 
about annihilation and atheism ; for, briefly to 
say it, there is not one word in the whole quota- 
tion but jingles false. But, first of all, here is 



UPON KANT. 177 

another little quotation with which we shall 
begin what we have further to say : — " So far 
from seeing too dimly, as in the case of perplexed 
obscurity, their defect is the very reverse ; they 
see too clearly, and fancy that others see as clearly 
as themselves. Such, without any tincture of 
confusion, was the obscurity of Kant/' Further 
on, too, De Quincey (Works, vol. iv. pp. 182, 183) 
talks of the same as an ''elliptical obscurity," 
links in a chain of thought being omitted. 

Style, as we know, is one of De Quincey's 
familiars; he is not only an admirable stylist 
himself, but he is also an admirable judge of style. 
Knowing Kant, then, he must be correct as to 
Kant's obscurity. Now Kant is obscure — even 
Hegel says so, and he of all men is the best qua- 
lified to judge ; but Hegel's theory of Kant's 
obscurity is very unlike De Quincey' s. Hegel, 
in fact, explains it by the words, " Zum Ueber- 
fluss des Beweisens kommt noch der Ueber- 
fluss der Sprache," or, indeed, by the single word 
" Geschwatzigkeit." Nay, in regard to expressions 
of Kant, Hegel {Logik, i. p. 84 ; the other, p. 220) 
may be found using such words as '' verworrene 
Schwerfalligkeit." And this is the truth. Kant's 
obscurity, so far from being produced by " fancy- 

M 



1 78 DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE 

ing that others saw as clearly as himself," arose, 
on the contrary, simply from fearing that he 
should never get others to see at all. Kant's 
obscurity, so far from "being free from confu- 
sion," is full of it — full to "perplexed clumsi- 
ness." Kant's obscurity, finally, so far from 
being " elliptical," is tautological, is produced, 
not only by " superfluity of proving," but by 
" superfluity of speech," by mere " loquacity," 
endless iteration. Would the reader have an 
example, let him turn to the Kritik of Pure 
Reason, and endeavour to read there the second 
" analogy of experience." What is discussed in 
it is Causality, the germ, the fons et origo, the 
creative eye, the key to Kant's entire system. 
The needs, then, in such a case, are distinctness, 
clearness, conviction, certainty ; but what we 
have instead can be termed only a tautological 
obscurity, perplexed not only to confusion, but 
even to despair. Kant here can never persuade 
himself that he has yet stated the case so that a 
reader must understand it ; arrived at the end, he 
returns ever to the beginning again ; in perpetual 
doubt, he repeats a thousand times ; and the 
ultimate effect on the reader is to produce the 
belief that all this straining and striving on the 



UPON KANT. 179 

part of Kant arises not so much from his in- 
ability to set his principle in its true light, as from 
the inadequacy of the principle itself to the light 
in which he would set it. Here, in short, what 
to De Quincey is present is really absent, what 
absent really present ; and this brilliant writer 
is " contradictorily and even curiously" in error. 
The irrelevancy that loomed through De Quin- 
cey's absurd and impossible charges of atheism, 
repeats and confirms itself, then, as regards such 
a palpable matter as style, — where, too, the critic 
himself is eminently a master and judge. 

But, returning to the first quotation, we perceive 
the teaching of Kant further characterized by De 
Quincey as only of a negative or destructive na- 
ture. " His intellect was essentially destructive," 
he says ; then he talks of " his ApoUyon mind,'' 
and, of course, he could not miss that everlasting 
but much misunderstood " AUes-zermalmender." 
All this again, however, is just the reverse of the 
truth. The destructive or negative side of Kant's 
intellect was very subordinate to the constructive 
and affirmative. Construction, indeed, was his 
special industry; and, if he possessed any in- 
stincts at all, these were they which De Quincey 
directly denies him — instincts, namely, of '' resto- 



180 DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE 

ration and creation." What can be at all named 
the negative or destructive side of Kant's indus- 
try confines itself almost exclusively to the Dia- 
lectic of his first Kritik. But even there his 
object, in the end, is not by any means to de- 
stroy, but simply to prepare for building — simply 
to prepare for '^ restoration and creation/' He 
desires, indeed, to point out what, on certain 
subjects, speculative reason is qualified to say, 
and what, on the same subjects, it is not qualified 
to say ; and he hopes that, while he will be thus 
able, on the one hand, to put a stop for ever to 
the scandalous rixm of philosophers, he will be 
able also, on the other hand, to lead us to the 
only true and valid arguments which can have 
place in the sphere in question. This is his 
simple object ; and this he conceives himself to 
have accomplished ; and the word " destructive," 
as applied to that object, would not only have 
surprised and vexed him, but it is a word totally 
beside the point which he regarded. 

The source of such mistakes as convey them- 
selves by this word " destructive " of De Quincey, 
or the phrase of others, that Kant left reason " a 
faculty of lies," is to be found probably in this, 
that it is only the latter part of the Dialectic of 



UPON KANT. 181 

the first Kritik which, as more easily written, has 
been generally read. Thus it becomes intelligible 
how students, who understood what they read in 
isolation only and not in connexion, were tempted 
to fly to the unwarrantable conclusion that, be- 
cause Kant here opposed some of the usual argu- 
ments bearing on the existence of God, he sought 
to discredit this doctrine itself. The reverse was 
the truth, and Kant here had no object in the 
end that was not afl&rmative. 

But leaving this, it is certain that, apart from 
this single Dialectic, all else in Kant is creative 
and restorative. In the JSsthetik and Analytik 
of his first Kritik, for example, he creates afresh 
ontology, while his second Kritik, together with 
the latter part of the third Kritik and this very 
Dialectic of which we have just spoken, restores 
metaphysic, or, to Kant's belief, establishes the 
existence of God, the freedom of the will, and the 
immortality of the soul. In the third Kritik, 
further, if there be a certain negative as regards 
design, this negative is again owing to motives 
sincerely affirmative, and there is much in the 
criticism that is both penetrating and satisfac- 
tory. Moreover, also, it is in this Kritik that 
we have affirmatively enunciated, and for the 



182 DE QUINCE Y AND COLEKIDGE 

first time, perhaps, principles of the sublime and 
beautiful, accompanied by surprisingly original 
and suggestive characterizations of genius and 
of what concerns the liberal arts. We are not 
limited to the three Kritiken either, but may 
refer to his numerous affirmative contributions, 
as to psychology in his Anthropology, to logic in 
his treatise of that name and elsewhere, and to 
the principles of politics in various of his minor 
works. The whole works of Kant, indeed, are 
such as readily to enable any one conclusively to 
demonstrate the injustice of applying the epithet 
" destructive" to such an opulent and affirmative 
soul ; and De Quincey, in the allegations which 
he has permitted himself, has only perpetrated a 
crime — a crime not only to Kant and history, but 
a crime to himself. 

To be told so pointedly, too, that Kant's circle 
was ''limited" grates; for the vast comprehen- 
siveness of the man lies in the very titles of his 
books, and we know that, of all modern philo- 
sophers, he was the first to exhibit to us the ex- 
ample both of a character and a system that, to 
speak like Emerson, " came'' (as nearly as pos- 
sible) '' full circle." 

Then in this circle " none durst tread but he" 



UPON KANT. 183 

— the ApoUyon, the Alles zermalmender, the 
shatterer of the world. This is the central weak 
point, the special lunes of the De Quincey nature. 
De Quincey here has teased up his imagination 
into the mighty, the monstrous, the vast, the 
vague ; and so he would similarly infect ours. 
We must watch the limbs of a giant in the gloom 
— a giant who was alone in his power, but dan- 
gerous, destructive, deadly. We take leave to 
say, however, that this awful being of the ima- 
gination, around whom, at the bidding of De 
Quincey, we are, as it were, to charge the air with 
the strange, the mystic, the irresistible — with 
what we name to ourselves, as in reference to De 
Quincey and in his own word, the " tumultuosissi- 
mento,'' contrasts but oddly with the plain, little 
Konigsberg burgher of truth. Within his own 
circle none durst tread but he ! Why, the fact is, 
that anybody may enter it and pace about it at his 
ease, if he will but faithfully apply what ordinary 
faculties have been refused to no one. Kant has 
certainly left behind him the greatest philosophical 
structure that any man since Aristotle, and before 
Hegel, had been privileged to raise. Still there 
is nothing supernatural or superhuman in the 
mental powers by which this was accomplished. 



184 DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE 

Philosophically, Kant is fertile, rich, original, as 
well in depth, as in comprehensiveness, to a de- 
gree that surprises : he was the. first, as it were, 
that entered the very temple of metaphysic, and 
made its whole space his. Still his secret to 
all this was patient and tenacious thought. A 
clue was given by Hume, and his merit was ' 
to follow it unweariedly till the whole treasures 
to which it led lay at his feet. True ; original 
power of faculty was required for this, and such 
was present from the first ; but in this faculty 
there was nothing of the amorphous, nothing of 
the incomprehensible, nothing of the hopelessly 
transcendent, nothing of that which the words of 
De Quincey would picture. There is nothing of 
all this, indeed, whether in the thoughts, or in the 
words, or in the demeanour of the plain, simple, 
discreet, of the eminently well-meaning, but some- 
what old-maidenish and loquacious, Herr Profes- 
sor Kant. Kant, indeed, is a lesson of plainness 
to De Quincey. Take up the first volume of 
the latter's works, and read the autobiographic 
sketches. It is impossible to proceed far before 
— always, too, in a certain dissatisfaction with the 
business spinning and the common literary ex- 
pedients in support — one says to one's-self : How 



UPON KANT. 185 

much dandyism there is in all this, and surely 
De Quincey might have received the lash of 
Thackeray, yet kissed the rod ! The eternal 
ascription of wealth and importance to everything 
that belonged to him ; the perpetual weary gossip 
about lords, lords, and ladies, ladies, his dressing- 
room and his hurrying to his toilette ; the uxori- 
ousness of Lord This, not vulgar, but noiseless, 
and unobtrusive; the sweet Irish style of innocent 
gaiety of Lady That ; the immense rents of the 
various houses he lived in ; the trouble he had 
with the hard-mouthed horses at Lord So-and- 
so's ; the heavy golden perquisite he gave the 
groom ; his longing for four horses, not for splen- 
dour — oh no ! they used to drive six and eight 
horses in "Wales ; the intense commerce he had 
had with men of every rank, from the highest to 
the lowest : such things, surely, can warrant no 
other conclusion. Then we have his want of ap- 
petite for the " mechanic understanding,'' and his 
necessity for stimulants in the shape of mysteries. 
Coleridge's mind demanded mysteries, it appears, 
and so does his ; and we see him, resolute, so far 
as wishes go, to rise to some great monumental 
work, something that concealed a most profound 
meaning — a meaning of prodigious compass. 



186 DE QUINCEY AND COLEKIDGE 

Thus perpetually is he lashing himself into the 
grandiose, the '' tumultuosissimento," some dream 
" tumultuous and changing as a musical fugue/' 
" where he was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, 
chattered at, by monkeys, by paroquets, by cocka- 
toos/' etc. 

These last words will recall, perhaps, one of the 
finest passages of the Confessions, of which not 
to admire the writing as writing would amount 
to felo-de-se ; but after all, is there anything in 
it, is it more than empty form, can it boast a par- 
ticle of matter, is there burden of thought in it, 
and is not the very trick of it soon learned ? In- 
teresting it is certainly, and from an inferior artist 
we should receive it without a murmur. But De 
Quincey was in himself no inferior artist. De 
Quincey brought a rich original endowment, as 
Burns says, '' direct from Almighty God." Not 
only did he possess an imagination of marvellous 
opulence — not only was a susceptivity his, rare, 
discriminating, universal, and of the most delicate 
touch — not only could he give expression to such 
faculties by a style elastic, living, inexhaustible, 
that penetrated with ease into every nook, nor 
ever turned baffled away — not only this, but he 
added further a most excellent understanding, 



UPON KANT. 187 

clear, sound, vigorous : and by this addition he 
stood forth a man fit formally to cope with the 
very highest problems that any philosophy has 
yet proposed. In a certain sort, indeed, De 
Quincey came from the bosom of his mother, per- 
haps a swifter, perhaps a richer spirit, it may be 
than even Kant. Yet compare the work they did. 
That is the truth of De Quincey ; he fell a mar- 
tyr to the tone of the day — a tone that sounded 
only genius, genius ; let us have flights, let us have 
the unexampled, the inconceivable, the unutter- 
ably original. To have the credit of being up in 
German Metaphysicians, Latin Schoolmen, Thau- 
maturgic Platonists, Eeligious Mystics, etc., this 
too lay in the order of the day. But to be up in 
such things meant only to be able to read in them, 
and so, from time to time, take inspiration from 
them. Fairly to apprehend, masticate, absorb, 
assimilate them — them and their historical con- 
nexion — that was not the business of the creative 
genius, but only of the plodder. Accordingly, as 
we have just seen in De Quincey' s case, to be up 
in Kant was simply to know him not, but to be 
guilty of monstrous injustice to the name and 
fame of one of the purest and greatest workers 
whom history records. Truly it was a vast 



188 DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE 

mistake : the early years of the present century 
sparkled in England, as with the splendours and 
gaieties of a feast, so many men of surpassing 
genius talked and wrote and sang in them. But 
anything worthy of the name of study or of work 
had been accepted by the fewest. Not ill-read 
in classics certainly, the most of them left college 
with but a formal varnish of the other disciplines ; 
and — save some desultory reading — as they left, 
they for the most part remained. ISTor with all 
his genius, with all his talent, with all his un- 
questionable learning, can De Quincey, on the 
whole, be considered an exception. It is this 
which, in his respect, we have sought to illus- 
trate in canvassing his relation to Kant, in regard 
to whom his mistakes also, we hope, have not un- 
profitably been signalized. 

One other notice ("The Last Days") of Kant 
there occurs in De Quincey's works, but, as only a 
repetition of Wasianski's painful and unnecessary 
diary of a case of senile marasmus in the person 
of Kant, it shall not concern us here. De Quincey 
speaks also of Schelling, of the Transcendental 
Idealism, but his description of this book looks 
as if it were not from knowledge, though in such 
terms as to imply knowledge, — the basis all the 
time being simply conjecture. 



UPON KANT. 189 

We shall now turn to Coleridge in similar re- 
ference ; and shall begin, as after the preceding 
is but natural, with the peculiarity of his char- 
acter, in subjection also, like that of De Quincey, 
to the influences of the time. Here, as there, our 
tone shall be that of one who loves : we shall no 
longer see, we hope, however, the divine nimhis 
alone, but something, too, of the man within. We 
shall remain still, nevertheless, not fuller of frank- 
ness than free from grudge. As we have not 
reviled De Quincey, so neither shall we revile 
Coleridge. The best of this fine poet and critic 
of poets we carry by heart, and have so carried 
it through life ; and we shall not willingly yield 
to any one in intensity of appreciation for the 
minutest beauty, or in enthusiasm of admiration 
for genius, and music, and imaginative splendour. 

Probably Coleridge was right when, as will be 
found in certain autobiographical notices at the 
end of the second volume of the second edition of 
his Biographia Literaria, he talks of his " ebul- 
lient brain" in boyhood ; and intimates that at 
that period " no poor fellow's idea-pot ever so 
bubbled up" as his own. It will not be easy to 
conceive, either, any more accurate description of 
his own young literary self than that contained 



190 DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE 

in these words from page 320 of the same volume : 
— " Sensibility, imagination, vanity, sloth, and 
feelings of deep and bitter contempt for almost 
all who traversed the orbit of my understanding, 
were even then prominent and manifest." What 
is thus indicated is by no means an individual 
phenomenon, however, but a constitution of con- 
sciousness that may be predicated of many — that 
may be predicated, for example, not of one, nor 
of several, but probably of all those men who, 
from Byron to Alexander Smith, from Hazlitt to 
GilfiUan, from Mat Lewis to Thackeray, from 
Burns to Tennyson, from De Quincey to Carlyle, 
have been regarded as possessed, whether for 
potence or for impotence, of the temperament of 
genius. For it by no means follows that power 
or strength is convertible with genius : the pro- 
bability, indeed, is, that for one seed of genius 
that struggles to the tree, nine hundred and 
ninety-nine die at various stages of imbecility 
and misery. But, however this be, Coleridge's 
words apply, even in view of the names recited, 
to no one more accurately than to himself. He 
had an " ebullient brain f his " idea-pot'' was as 
a seething caldron. A greedy reader, he was deep 
in metaphysic and theology before fifteen. The 



UPON KANT. 191 

hymns of the mystic Synesius were at his fingers' 
ends ; Catullus and Terence and Lucretius lay 
under his pillow; and, disdaining the games of 
the open, he walked the academic corridors, recit- 
ing passages, applauding, blaming, suggesting, — 
his cheeks glowing, his head smoking, and his 
heart aflame. He knew nothing of the ways of 
life, nothing of the world, nothing of the men in 
it,— all these were on the outside to him, beings 
of another class, inferiors to his imagination, before 
whom he yet cowered as superiors in fact. In 
the so great love that developed itseK within him 
for poets and philosophers, in the splendid images 
and big thoughts they woke in him, in the wild 
enthusiasm with which he pleaded for them, in 
the scorn and hatred that inflamed or gnawed 
him towards those who denied them, — in all this 
he felt earnest that he was of kindred nature, 
predestinate to ApoUoship, the godship of pro- 
phecy, the godship of song. Then followed pur- 
poseless wanderings, aimless aberrations — as of 
one, indeed, aimlessly drunken of his own good 
fortune, and that dallied aimlessly with the very 
privilege he hugged. 

But now love came, and, for the time, he was 
rescued. Once again the earth was golden and 



192 DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE 

the air was joy ; he had found his Sara. In awe 
before the innocent sweet wisdom, the prescient 
purity, his heart grew deep. They need not fear 
for bread, he thought : it was his Father's world, 
and they could not want. He had wealth within 
him — opulence. The world was open to him ; 
literature was open to him ; he would spring into 
the saddle and spur before the rest. So he mar- 
ried, and began the Watchman. Of the happiness 
of love we will believe that he tasted deeply, as 
of the happiness of work ; but not for long. Too 
soon the Watchman is of avail but as fuel in the 
grate ; too soon has marriage taught him, as he 
says himself, "the wonderful uses of that vulgar 
commodity yclept bread ;" too soon we find allu- 
sions in him to his wife's groans, and their thin 
faces, and his distress to write for bread. Alas, 
the ways of life ! The dsedal wings have snapped, 
then ; and, with a shock, he has come to earth. 
When he looks up again, it is to him, we fancy, 
as if some one had snuffed the lights out, and he 
sees the shabby actors, and the rough wood, and 
the coarse canvas. It is, indeed, by no means 
pleasant to have to see the Watchman go up in 
that way ; while, as for his wife's thin cheeks and 
her groans that call to him for bread, that is in- 



UPON KANT. 193 

supportable. A certain wild honey that will not 
feed the body, — this is all he has gathered ; bread 
he has none. An inner life is his one necessity ; 
but, in so uneasy an externality, of which he is 
himself the powerless and apprehensive centre, 
an inner life he cannot have — an inner life it is 
maddening even to try to have. He cannot help 
reverting to the time when he was alone, and free 
from responsibility. He doubts his fitness for 
domestic life, and fain would make it credible to 
himself that poetry cannot consort with prose. 
On the other side, again, he cannot hide from 
himself the advantages of well- sized rooms, and 
commodious furniture, and delicate dinners, and 
the talk mostly to himself, with freedom from 
care. If then, now, he seek to relieve the domes- 
tic burden by a visit to his friends, we cannot 
wonder; while we must sympathize with his 
resolution that there, in that leisure, he will 
write, he will work, he will do the best for his 
family, he will create philosophies, dash down 
poems that — that — etc. 

But, even in this element, the good was not at 
once realized. It was so pleasant to read, and 
dream, and wander, and talk, and be listened to. 
Work was irksome, he found. These fine things 

N 



194 BE QUINCEY AND COLEEIDGE 

that he would condescend to do, and that cer- 
tainly everybody expected of him, would not, 
unfortunately, allow themselves to be^ done at a 
wish. If philosophies were to be made, philo- 
sophies were to be learned ; and that was labour. 
These German fellows, at all events, of whom he 
spoke so much, were strangely intolerant of being 
read in. One could read in Plato and Bacon, and 
all the rest of them; and one could quote passages 
from them that spoke for themselves. But was 
the one or the other possible with the Germans ? 
One might, indeed, quote from Kant, as others 
did, the moral world within and the starry heavens 
without; but was there any possibility of a single 
other quotation? It was disagreeable; people 
looked up to him so ; he had spoken so divinely, 
he had promised so much ; it seemed there was 
an element of expectation round him ; he felt 
goaded, goaded, for ever goaded. A panoramic 
imagination and an easy stomach ; if he was to 
work, he must have the latter : if he was ever to 
evolve the marvels of which his words had given 
the foretaste, he must have the former; but opium 
gave both. And so procrastination increased, 
and as he could not vacate the tripod, and as 
with time intensity of expectation grew, there 



UPON KANT. 195 

needs must come excuses, and pretexts, and 
subterfuges, and plausible propos to every man. 
Or, by fits, answering desperately to the goad, he 
wrote blindly, but authoritatively, of Hobbes and 
Descartes, and vilipended Hume, and quoted 
Plato and Plotinus, Salvator Eosa and Grynaeus, 
and appropriated the erudition of Maass, and 
plagiarized from Schelling, and maundered about 
Kant — losing daily more and more of that which 
is the soul and centre of humanity, conscience, 
and the moral law. 

It is here now that we take up Coleridge, with 
the view of eliciting lights that, in relation to the 
Germans, may prove illustrative as well of them 
as of him ; and painful, harsh, as this general 
picture may be, we hope to adduce matter that 
shall abundantly substantiate it. Of such matter, 
indeed, a large store has been already laid before 
the public. Sir James Mackintosh, Professor 
Ferrier, and Coleridge's own editor and nephew, 
Henry Nelson Coleridge (whose candour at once 
and research in these respects are alike admirable), 
have amply accomplished this as regards Hobbes, 
Descartes, Hume, Maass, and Schelling. De 
Quincey, too, so far as concerns Schelling and 
Coleridge's intromissions with him, declares that 



196 DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE 

" the entire essay (in the Biographia Literaria), 
from the first word to the last, is a verbatim trans- 
lation from Schelling/' The paper of Professor 
Ferrier in particular (see Blackwood's Magazine 
for March 1840) is a formal proof of this; and 
we quite sympathize with this accomplished and 
earnest student, when, with reference to Cole- 
ridge's cheerful, or even benignant, admissions of 
" genial coincidences" between himself and Schel- 
ling, he exclaims : — " Genial coincidences, for- 
sooth ! where every one word of the one author 
tallies with every one word of the other !'* We 
do not intend to re-tread, however, all the ground 
which has been already so well trodden by these 
eminent men in advance. Still, in the prosecution 
of our own immediate theme (Kant), we shall 
touch on several points that may prove, perhaps, 
supplementary to what has been said, not of 
Maass and others before him, but of Schelling. 

In chapter ix. of the Biographia Literaria, we 
find these : — 

" While I in part translate the following obser- 
vations from a contemporary writer of the Conti- 
nent, let me be permitted to premise, that I might 
have transcribed the substance from memoranda 
of my own, which were written many years 



UPON KANT. 197 

before his pamphlet was given to the world ; and 
that I prefer another's words to my own, partly as 
a tribute due to priority of publication, but still 
more from the pleasure of sympathy in a case 
where coincidence only was possible. ... In 
Schelling's Natur-Philosoioliie, and the System de$ 
Transcenclentalen Idealismus, I first found a genial 
coincidence with much that I had toiled out for 
myself, and a powerful assistance in what I had 
yet to do.'' 

One is apt to suppose that there is a tacit 
reference to Kant here, and that his was the 
quarry from which Coleridge must have '' toiled 
out" that — whatever it was — of which he speaks. 
In the same chapter, indeed, he acknowledges 
himself to be indebted to the "writings of the 
illustrious sage of Konigsberg, more than to any 
other work," for the invigoration and discipline 
of his understanding; he boasts (and 1815 is the 
date) of "fifteen years' familiarity with them;" 
and he alleges, in explanation of his coincidences 
with Schelling, that they had both " studied in 
the same school, and been disciplined by the same 
preparatory philosophy, namely, the writings of 
Kant." But if Coleridge admit, in Kant's regard,- 
a like debt with Schelling, it is not so certain 



198 DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE 

that he was fully awake to the truth in either case. 
We suspect that he did not understand the exact 
nature of Schelling's obligation to Kant ; and that, 
like most of his countrymen probably, he supposed 
Schelling to be a great original writer, who, of 
course, read in Kant, as in others, but, on the 
whole, owed his triumph to his own "magical 
brain." The strict historical connexion of the 
German philosophers was not then well under- 
stood in England, and such suppositions were, at 
least on the part of non-experts, very excusable. 
Coleridge, then (whether, as a professed expert, 
excusable or not), will not, as seems likely, by any 
means, foolishly allow himself to be any deeper 
in Kant's debt than he fancies Schelling will. 
" Yet there had dawned upon me," he cries, '^even 
before I had met with the Critique of the Pure 
Reason, a certain guiding light;" and he lets us 
know that there were others besides Kant to 
whom he and Schelling owed inspiration. " Both 
had equal obligations," he asserts, "to the polar 
logic and dynamic philosophy of Giordano Bruno ;" 
and then, as regards Behmen (Bohme), while 
Schelling knows him only recently, coincides with 
him only incidentally, and can extend to him 
" only feelings of sympathy," he (Coleridge) 



UPON KANT. 199 

reverences him from "a much earlier period," 
'' owes him a debt of gratitude/' and has to thank 
him for " obligations more direct." Coleridge 
will not attribute to Kant all the glory, then, 
whether in his own case or in that of Schelling. 
They had both Bruno, he says; they had both 
Behmen. Still we may take it for granted that 
he would have allowed the greater yart of the 
glory to have been the due of Kant. 

Now, then, returning to our extract, we find the 
case to stand thus : — Coleridge claims to have 
virtually preceded and anticipated Schelling 
through a like knowledge with this latter of 
Kant, Bohme, and Bruno. Nay, we are given to 
understand that this is not wonderful, inasmuch 
as Coleridge, in some respects, had even the ad- 
vantage of Schelling. This was particularly the 
case as regards Bohme, and as regards " a certain 
guiding light." What concerns Bohme may be 
passed, there is so much else to occupy us. The 
reader, we daresay, has a very good guess already 
as to what knowledge of Bohme the works of 
Coleridge will show, and what those of Schelling; 
as well as to how it stands with the age, direct- 
ness, and amount of it in the case of either. As 
for the " guiding light," in the possession of that 



200 DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE 

light — ^if it led Coleridge to the results of Schel- 
ling in independence of Kant — we may allow 
him to have been singularly fortunate. Never- 
theless, we are disposed to believe that, had he 
known how the matter really stood with what we 
call " the strict historical connexion," Bruno and 
Bohme, indeed (though not as co-factors in the 
same breath with Kant) might have been men- 
tioned, but not the ''light/' A " guiding light '' 
to Kant and leyond Kant, lefore Kant — that were 
truly a wonder of wonders ! 

Coleridge's anticipation of Schelling, now, is 
contained, it seems, in certain " Memoranda ;" 
and these were written, we are told, " many years 
before Schelling's pamphlet (a word which runs 
lighter than 'book') was given to the world." 
Again, further, the particular "pamphlets," of 
which, in the case of Schelling, Coleridge avows 
knowledge, are the Natur-Philosophie, and the 
System des Transcendentalen Idealismus, It is 
the matter of these, then, that Coleridge shall 
have anticipated. Now, the comparison of a few 
historical dates will put these things in very curi- 
ous lights. 

Coleridge returned from Germany in 1800, 
where he had resided during fourteen months : 



UPON KANT. 201 

and, as was natural to suppose, it is to this date 
(of 1800) that, in the Biograjphia Literaria, he 
refers, as we have seen, the commencement of his 
knowledge of Kant. Now, the Natur-Philoso- 
phie was published in 1797, and the Transcen- 
dentalen Idealismus in 1800. It is evident, then, 
that Coleridge's " Memoranda," having been writ- 
ten many years before Schelling's " pamphlet was 
given to the world/' must have been written many 
years also before 1797, many years before Fichte 
(the first sketch of whose system dates only from 
1794), many years before he knew Kant, or had 
even learned German, and, indeed (seeing that he 
was born in 1772), many years before his twenty- 
fifth year. If the " light " perplexed, these " Me- 
moranda" confoimd. Written as alleged, their 
contents are to be supposed accurately represented 
by this verbatim translation from Schelling ! Let 
us assume a mistake in the date, however ; let us 
assume the " many years " not to have existed ; 
and the " Memoranda " to have been written after 
a knowledge of Kant. In that case it must be 
granted that, between 1800 and 1815, Coleridge 
had time enough to " toil out " for himself, from 
Kant, such doctrines as those of Schelling's, and 
before any actual acquaintance with Schelling, 



202 DE QUINCEY AND COLEKIDGE 

if it were from Kant, directly from Kant and 
before any actual acquaintance with Schelling, 
that such doctrines were to be at all toiled out. 
But every one in the least acquainted with Ger- 
man philosophy, and its rigid historical sequence, 
must smile somewhat curiously at the pretensions 
of any one, even a German, to the evolution of a 
system from Kant, identical with that of Schel- 
ling, without the intervention of the link of Fichte. 
From Kant to Schelling, Fichte, in fact, is the 
indispensable bridge. Coleridge, if he evolved 
Schelling, must, at least, have previously known 
Fichte. But Coleridge did not know Fichte. 
His notice of Fichte in this celebrated chapter 
(ix.) is but a word, and representative of little or 
nothing ; while the burlesque is simply childish, 
and points to an astounded gaping at the outside 
of the Wissenschaftslehrey as its only possible 
source. Or if Coleridge evolved Fichte, where 
is that evolution represented in his works ? Nay, 
where in his works is that " much that he had 
toiled out for himself?" where is that which, 
by Schelling's " powerful assistance," he after- 
wards did ? where is this accomplishment that is 
like Schelling, and beyond Schelling, to be found 
represented ? Why, nowhere — unless in that 



UPON KANT. 203 

astonishing, claimed and unclaimed, attributed 
and unattributed, piece of transcendental idealism, 
in reference to which bewilderment reaches its 
climax, when we read, " ' To remain unintelligible 
to such a mind,' exclaims Schelling, on a like 
occasion," and know that this is the occasion, and 
that Coleridge is simply literally translating, 
even in his notes (as in that one about Leibnitz 
and Hemsterhuis), from Schelling ! When he 
says, then, that he *' might have transcribed ' his 
Schellingianism ' from raemoranda of his own 
that were written many years before Schelling's 
pamphlet was given to the world," is he not also 
saying something so delightfully impossible that 
it is impossible not to smile ? But when, further, 
we see the bland Coleridge politely bowing, and 
chivalrously waiving the pas to Schelling, as pre- 
ferring " another's words to his own," " as a tribute 
due to priority of publication," but " still more 
from the pleasure of sympathy in a case where 
coincidence only was possible," is it possible to do 
aught else — in presence of so comical an example 
of the pure ludicrous — than convert the smile 
into a downright laugh ? 

But if Coleridge evolved Schelling without 
knowing Schelling, he must have evolved him 



204 DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE 

also, not only without knowing Fichte, but with- 
out — or rather, let us say, only with such know- 
ledge of Kant as gave rise to very strange results ; 
for, however curious be the " light that dawned 
on him" heforey scarcely less curious must we 
pronounce the light that dawned on him after, he 
knew Kant. To illustrate and make good this 
allegation, we cannot altogether avoid quotations ; 
but, as we shall compress and reduce them to 
their least, it would be very desirable that the 
reader kept the original by him. In chapter ix. 
Coleridge refers to Kant thus :— 

" The originality, the depth, and the compres- 
sion of the thoughts ; the novelty and subtlety 
yet solidity and importance of the distinctions ; 
the adamantine chain of the logic ; and, I will 
venture to add (paradox as it will appear to those 
who have taken their notion of Immanuel Kant 
from reviewers and Frenchmen), the clearness and 
evidence of the Critique of the Pure Eeason, etc. 
. . . took possession of me as with a giant's hand. 
After fifteen years' familiarity with them, I still 
read these, and all his other productions, with 
undiminished delight and increasing admiration. 
The few passages that remained obscure to me, 
after due effort of thought (as the chapter on 



UPON KANT. 205 

original apperception), and the apparent contradic- 
tions which occur, I soon found were hints and 
insinuations referring to ideas which Kant either 
did not think it prudent to avow, or, etc. . . . He 
had been in imminent danger of persecution. . . . 
The expulsion of [Fichte] . . . from the Univer- 
sity of Jena supplied experimental proof that the 
venerable old man's caution was not groundless. 
In spite, therefore, of his own declarations, I could 
never believe that it was possible for him to have 
meant no more by his Noumenon, or Thing in 
itself, than his mere words express ; or that, in 
his own conception, he confined the whole plastic 
power to the forms of the intellect, leaving for the 
external cause, for the materiale of our sensations, 
a matter without form, which is, doubtless, incon- 
ceivable. I entertained doubts, likewise, whether, 
in his own mind, he even laid all the stress which 
he appears to do on the moral postulates. . . . 
^(ovrjae avvejolcnv : and for those who could not 
pierce through the symbolic husk, his writings 
were not intended. Questions which cannot be 
fully answered without exposing the respondent 
to personal danger,'' etc. 

This passage, while it proves Coleridge to have 
seriously occupied himself with the great work of 



206 DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE 

Kant as far as the deduction of the categories, 
proves him also, however strenuous and persever- . 
ing his endeavours, to have, in general result, 
failed. That ease in " the " pure reason to which 
he pretends, he did not attain. For, in the first 
place, the ascription to Kant of designful reti- 
cence and intentional obscurity is not only un- 
founded and gratuitous, but its reverse is the 
truth. Kant's great works are free from any 
reticence, and as for intentional obscurity, any- 
thing wider of the truth it were impossible to 
invent Kant is — but never intentionally — ob- 
scure ; only from excess of intention to be not 
obscure is it that, in effect, he becomes obscure. 
This Kant knew and lamented ; and so it is that 
he is never done with cries to the excellent 
" styles " of such men as Eeinhold and Fichte to 
come to his rescue. ^' Hints and insinuations," 
then, are quite beside Kant ; and, of all works, 
precisely his contain the least of " symbolic husk." 
A literal conveyance of his thought, for this he 
strains ; but he never calls on imagination for 
one that shall be figurative or symbolical. Of 
the obscurity, a peculiar terminology is certainly 
one element; but the others, as said, are only 
diffuseness, prolixity, and repetition (see Hegel 



UPON KANT. 207 

again here in his Hist of Phil,, vol. iii p. 503). 
Then the reason alleged, caution in consequence 
of persecution, is but an anachronism. That poor 
affair of Hilmer and Hermes in 1794 (still less 
Fichte's mishap in 1799) could have no influ- 
ence on events of 1781, of 1788, or even of 1790. 
Kant, then, far from being anxious to conceal his 
thought, was, on the contrary, O'yer-anxious to 
express it, and even sensitive to a fault at failure. 
Before printing, he does not seem to have prac- 
tised the usual reticence in conversation even; 
his friend Hippel could, from that source, and in 
priority to himself, publish some of his most 
original ideas. Kant, in brief, is the most in- 
genuous, candid, and loyal of mankind ; and 
Coleridge's long and somewhat equivocal defence 
of concealment (see his book further) could not 
possibly have been more misplaced. 

In the second place, in his misinterpretation of 
the obscurities which he himself assigns, lies the 
proof of Coleridge's failure to understand that 
single theory of perception which, we may say, is 
their sole burden. Of the various materials in 
this theory — noumenon, sensation, intuition, no- 
tion of understanding, act of judgment, idea of 
reason — and of the various syntheses of these, in 



208 DE QUmCEY AND COLEKIDGE 

imagination, in " original apperception," etc., we 
readily grant the difficulty; but this difficulty 
Coleridge has not overcome. On the contrary, all 
these things, which are as windmills of fact, he 
has only Quixotically converted into giants of 
dream. This is seen in the very expedient by 
which he has resolved the obscurity and reticence 
in question : in superfoetating, that is, these by a 
fantastic brood of his own, he has, at best, only 
complimented his imagination at the expense of 
his understanding. Thus the noumenon — which, 
as but external antecedent known only in its 
subjective effects, lays Kant under the most sig- 
nificant restrictions, not only in reference to 
knowledge^ but in reference to design and leauty 
— must, according to Coleridge, be to Kant, let 
him say what he may, the same cunning and 
unnameable sphinx, or other monster, that it is 
to himself. Nevertheless, Kant does confine that 
*' plastic power '' in the very manner which Cole- 
ridge refuses to believe ; while, as for '' matter 
without form," it is not easy sufficiently to indi- 
cate the constancy and clearness with which Kant 
urges that objects which are perceived only through 
a medium of sense can and must have form only 
from within. As regards sensation and intuition 



UPON KANT. 209 

{perception), on Maass, who is then signalizing 
the commonest Kantian distinctions here, Cole- 
ridge wiU be found (chap, v.) commenting in such 
manner as suggests only the blind groping of an 
unsteady imagination in the dark. These relate, 
for example, to matter (sensation from without) 
and form (perception of time and space from 
within) ; now, when Maass remarks that the 
characters of an object are either individual or 
common (i.e., either material or format), Coleridge 
appends the comically inapposite comment — 
"Deceptive; the mark (character) in itself is 
always individual ; by an act of the reflex under- 
standing, it may be rendered a sign or general 
term." In remarking (chap, xii.) that Kant's 
intuition is used only "for that which can be 
represented in time and space," he would have 
insured perfect correctness, had he added the 
words, internally as well as externally; and, in 
that case, he would have seen that, in his sense, 
Kant does not deny " the possibility of intellec- 
tual intuitions." On the contrary, it is on these, 
and in that sense, that the introduction to the 
first Kritik is largely specially employed. The 
intellectual intuition which Kant denies to man 
is that (without medium of sense) which he 





210 DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE 

ascribes to God ; and is not what Coleridge sup- 
poses — it is^ in fact, the " Anschauender Ver- 
stand" of which he never caught a glimpse. 
When, further, he goes on to prefer to Kant's sense 
of intuition the ordinary English one, he again 
speaks, surely, in complete unconsciousness of 
the corresponding theory. Coleridge's knowledge 
of the remaining elements of this theory— at least, 
as represented by his intimations in respect to 
apperception, imagination^ and the postulates — is 
not unconfirmative of the preceding. Appercep- 
tion is spoken of in the extract as — that which it 
pretty well is — the obscurity special ; but how- 
ever absurd it be to attribute it to reticence, to 
intention, it is infinitely more absurd to imagine 
it into dream. In chap. xii. Coleridge speaks of 
it thus : — 

" Here, then, we have by anticipation the dis- 
tinction between the conditional finite I (which, 
as known in distinct consciousness by occasion of 
experience, is called by Kant's followers the em- 
pirical I) and the absolute I Am, and likewise 
the dependence, or rather the inherence of the 
former in the latter ; in whom we live and 
move," etc. 

Kant's " empirical I " is the ego as manifested 



UPON EANT. 211 

under affection, while Ms absolute " I Am" is the 
pure formal I, or, as he calls it also, the bare '' I 
think," — that is, the simple reflection I, which, to 
make them ours, '' must accompany all our other 
ideas, is in every experience of consciousness one 
and the same, and can be itself accompanied by 
none beyond/' It will perhaps be admitted, 
then, that this Orientalizing or Judaizing of the 
simple identity of every one — this hypostasizing 
of a thought common to all of us indiscriminately, 
into the awful I Am, is the most extraordinary 
apotheosis on record. That Coleridge should 
have converted the obscurity of some half-dozen 
paragraphs on a point of ordinary psychology into 
this ! No wonder that he conceived Kant, in 
such a ticklish position, reticent. Indeed, the 
due reticence might have been fortunate for him- 
self here. On imagination we have this : — 

" The imagination, then, I consider either as 
primary or secondary. The primary imagination 
I hold to be the living power and prime agent of 
all human perception, and as a repetition in the 
finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the 
infinite I Am." 

There are those, doubtless, who, in this passage, 
and others such, have seen only the original and 



212 DE QUmCEY AND COLERIDGE 

profound depth of Coleridge's own philosophy. 
There underlies all these wonders, however, 
nothing but Kant's simple distinction of imagi- 
nation into 'productive and reproductivey and the 
association of the former with original appercep- 
tion — affairs all of only human quality. A small 
matter, then, may give birth to the most marvel- 
lous spectra in the brain of Coleridge ; of which 
spectra, however, the true names are but distor- 
tion and caricature. The ideas of reason^ lastly, 
fall, for one part, into the moral postulates ; and 
in these Kant shall be to Coleridge insincere ! 
On these, as on a rock, Kant, however, found 
himself just rescued from a ravening ocean all 
around ; though, too, he thankfully acknowledged 
(in design) a distant gleam of firm land elsewhere. 
In these dreamy misapprehensions, then, and 
strange misinterpretations, we may well admire 
the relation of Coleridge to Kant. 

In the third place, the terms with which the 
extract opens, in regard to the merits of Kant and 
his works, are not always such aswe would ex- 
pect from an expert. " Compression," as we have 
seen, even though applied to the thoughts, is a 
word inapposite. Then, in spite of compression, 
it is not difficulty that Coleridge finds, but, on 



UPON KANT. 213 

the contrary, " clearness and evidence/* Hegel, 
for his part, found the study of Kant " difJficult " 
and " hard ;" and humanity in general have called 
him " dark." But Coleridge's own subsequent 
words cohere but ill with the general statement. 
After fifteen years' familiarity with the works of 
Kant, he still reads them, and with increasing- 
admiration. This is not much : still it is to be 
said that he who has once mastered such writers 
as Newton, and La Place, and Aristotle, and 
Kant, does not usually return to read in them, 
and with increasing admiration, etc. In such 
cases a return is conditioned by defect of memory, 
or for the sake of reference. The emotional, the 
imaginative, the rhetorical, does not exist in Kant; 
he has no sallies of wit, no novelties of expres- 
sion, no charm of manner, to attract in his works ; 
and, having once achieved these, his Principia, 
we return as seldom to them as the mathemati- 
cian to his Euclid. It is very different writers 
that we read m, and with increasing admiration, 
etc. In such phrases, then, we hold Coleridge to 
speak, not in intelligence, but in the air ; as it 
were, afloat, too, in a canoe of mere literary bal- 
ance. 

Perhaps we have seen in the preceding, not 



214 DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE 

only error, but even a certain disingenuousness. 
This latter macula, at least, is visible elsewhere. 
In chapter x., for example, we find Coleridge 
saying :— 

" The very words objective and subjective, of such 
constant recurrence in the schools of yore, I have 
ventured to re-introduce. ... I have cautiously 
discriminated the terms, the reason, and the 
understanding, encouraged and confirmed by the 
authority of our genuine divines and philosophers, 
before the Eevolution. . . . This [chap, xii.] dis- 
tinction between transcendental and transcendent 
is observed by our elder divines and philosophers, 
whenever they express themselves scholastically. 
... I shall venture [xii.] to use potence, in order 
to express a specific degree of a powder, in imita- 
tion of the algebraists. I have even hazarded the 
new verb potentiate,'' etc. 

Now, to begin with transcendent and transcen- 
dental, these words involve a distinction so 
absolutely and exclusively Kant's, that, without 
appealing to the whole subsequent history of 
philosophy in Germany, we may at once permit 
ourselves categorically to contradict the statement 
of Coleridge. Of reason and understanding, again, 
we may speak in precisely the same tone. This 



UPON KANT. 215 

distinction, also, is Kant's, and Kant's alone ; in 
whom, in fact, we are allowed to see the very 
process of its birth. Authority, then, is here 
superfluous ; but, were it at all wanted, there is 
Hegel's, and more than once. As for subjective 
and objective, Coleridge knows only their current, 
not their more important moral sense ; but they, 
too, like the others, are not derived from the elder 
divines, the schools of yore, etc., but straight from 
the Germans ; nor can less be said for the terms 
potence and potentiate, which are peculiarly Schel- 
ling's. There is a petty moral hebetude involved 
here, then, to which the excuse of opium, advanced 
in other cases, will not apply. It is true. Sir 
William Hamilton similarly sins; but may we 
not say, in the phrase of this latter, that the at- 
tempt implied, whether as concerns knowledge or 
as concerns ingenuousness, is " an involuntary 
felo-de-se'' ? It is fairly ludicrous, indeed, to hear 
Coleridge, in the midst of such labours (Maass 
and Schelling lying open before him), calling for 
our indulgence, " while he goes sounding on his 
dim and perilous way." 

The defence of Coleridge here, however natural, 
is characterized, on the part of his friends, by 
such naive propos as these : — 



216 DE QUINCEY AND COLEKIDGE 

" These borrowed plumes dressed him out but 
poorly ; ... he was generally spoken of ... as 
a man of original power, who had spoiled his 
own genius by devoting himself to the lucubra- 
tions of foreigners ! . . . There can be no reason- 
able doubt that he was at least in the same line 
of thought with him — was in search of what 
Schelling discovered — before he met with his 
writings ! ... It would not be difficult to show 
that Coleridge might have worked out a system 
not dissimilar to Schelling's in its essential 
features." 

Then we have allusions to his characteristic 
peculiarities, his " nerveless languor of body and 
bodily mind," his ignorance of the ways of " the 
market," and his want of ^' the mechanic under- 
standing." Now, we must say that, let his pecu- 
liarities have been what they may, ignorance of 
*' the market" — want of " the mechanic under- 
standing" — was not among them. Of this — and 
in its most mechanic and market application to 
pounds, shillings, and pence — Coleridge must be 
pronounced to have possessed a very fair share. 
Writing his Biographia Literaria, after the lapse 
of many years, he can still tell us in it all the 
particulars about the commercial unsuccess of the 



UPON KANT. 217 

Watchman, the Friend, etc., as about his sub- 
scribers, his canvassers, what he lost, and how he 
lost it, etc. He can talk as acutely as any trades- 
man of the stock of paper left upon his hands, 
"each sheet of which stood him," he assures 
us, " in fivepence previous to its arrival at his 
printer's." He forgets not his " postages," or how 
he had to buy paper and pay for printing, " at least 
fifteen per cent, beyond what the trade would have 
paid." As little does he forget that he had to 
give " 30 per cent, not of the net profits, but of 
the gross results," etc. Towards the end of the 
last volume, again, we find him able to use such 
expressions as these : — 

" On the 200 which Parsons in Paternoster 
Eow sells weekly, he gains eight shillings more 
than I do. ... To be sure, I have been somewhat 
fleeced and overreached by my London publisher, 
... I rather think that the intention is to employ 
me as a mere hackney, without any share of the 
profits!' 

Surely there is no want of " the mechanic 
understanding" — no ignorance of the ways of 
"the market" here. That, surely, is the very 
vernacular of both. As for his ill health and the 
opium it necessitated, into that we shall not pre- 



218 DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE 

Slime to inquire ; while, as for the want of fraudulent 
intention, and his general declaration in reference 
to Schelling, we shall content ourselves with 
reminding our readers of all that we know now, 
of his mis-references, of his groundless pretensions, 
of all his various other equivocal proceedings ; 
and we shall contrast with this knowledge one 
other extract, at the same time that we desire 
very much that the reader would not content 
himself with this, but would refer to the original 
for full details. The extract (from chapter ix.) 
is this : — 

" It would be but a mere act of justice to my- 
self were I to warn my future readers that an 
identity of thought, or even similarity of phrase, 
will not be at all times a certain proof that the 
passage has been borrowed from Schelling, or that 
the conceptions were originally learned from him 
. . . many of the most striking resemblances — 
indeed, all the main and fundamental ideas — were 
born and matured in my mind before I had even 
seen a single page of the German philosopher; 
and I might 'indeed affirm, with truth, before 
the more important works of Schelling had been 
written, or at least made public. . . . God forbid 
that I should be suspected of a wish to enter into 



UPON KANT. 219 

a rivalry with Schelling for the honours so un- 
equivocally his right. ... It would be an act of 
high and almost criminal injustice to pass over in 
silence the name of Mr. Eichard Saumarez . . . 
who needed only have taken his foundations some- 
what deeper and wider to have superseded a con- 
siderable part of my labours." 

We should not like to do injustice to the fine 
imaginative and aesthetic intellect of Coleridge ; 
but are we to blame if we recognise here as well, 
the insincerity and subterfuge, and even craft, of 
a nature weak, and very weak, morally ? Surely 
the introduction of Mr. Eichard Saumarez, in such 
connexion, must clinch reflection. It does not 
discompose Coleridge, either, to know that his 
translation of Schelling constitutes these "labours,'' 
which Mr. Saumarez just missed "superseding;'' 
and he winds up quite comfortably, as usual, with 
Grynseus and Salvator Eosa. 

The truth probably is, that Coleridge was not 
properly a student of philosophy, but rather a 
reader carptim. It pleased him, all the same, to 
sun himself, as quite a Brobdingnagian student, in 
the eyes of the innocent reader, by significant 
smiling nods to the fact of metaphysic and 
psychology being his " hobby-horse." In like 



220 DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE 

manner it pleased him, too, to yield to such idle 
subjective fancies of the moment, as " I believe in 
the depth of my being that the three great works 
since the introduction of Christianity are Bacon's 
Novum Organum, Spinoza's Ethica, and Kant's 
Kritik ;'' and to console his conscience, when it 
gnawed, by such images as, "I have laid too 
many eggs in the hot sands of this wilderness, 
the world, with ostrich carelessness, and ostrich 
oblivion." It is quite in keeping that Spinoza's 
should have been previously called an " unwhole- 
some book;" nor is it discrepant from such a 
nature that it should be very sharp on plagiarism 
in others, as in Hume and Aquinas, and about 
the line from Politian, and that it should whine 
pretentiously about taking " a refuge from bodily 
pain and mismanaged sensibility in abstruse 
researches." In all these things, plainly, it is no 
methodic student that we are made to see, but, 
on the contrary, a stranger, as it were, in a 
mysterious land that had roused the imagination 
rather than the understanding. 

With faculty and law, mostly of mere recep- 
tivity and imaginative suggestion, what system of 
philosophy could Coleridge have thought out for 
himself? A procession of pictures he could give 



UPON KANT. 221 

— to more he was incompetent. How, in this 
BiograpJiia Literaria, he flows on in an endless 
prosing and prosiness, a dreamy, egotistic, qnerii- 
lous, plaintive prosiness — on and on, and round 
and round — his topics, fancy and imagination, — 
Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb, the " lyrical ballads,'' 
the standards of criticism. Pope, Gray, Milton, 
Shakespeare, Plotinus, Proclus, Plato, Kant, 
Schelling — always in these last as if supporting 
a mighty weight, a something precious, mystic, 
unapproachable, of profound import, of prophetic 
power. Then, in addition to his anti-Bonaparte, 
anti- Jacobin, conservative politics, we have what 
he would call perhaps his transcendental trini- 
tarianism, and his mystical, rapt transformations, 
or reformations, of baptism, and the other rites 
of the Church, conceived mostly in Greek. Anon 
we have quotations — and he perfectly knows the 
effect of these — from the works virorum ohscu- 
TOTum, Finally, he returns again to mumble and 
maunder about German philosophy, and that he 
had toiled it all out for himself ; but that, in his 
laziness, he was magnanimous. Probably at 
bottom — we grieve to say so — it is a weak, self- 
indulgent, hollow nature this — a Harold Skimpole. 
It is his daughter that tells us in the preface, 



222 DE QUINCEY AND COLEEIDGE 

" Some persons appear to have confonnded the 
general courtesy and bland overflowing of his 
manners with the state of his affections, and 
because the feelings which prompted the former 
flitted over the surface of his heart, to suppose 
that the latter were flitting and superficial too/' 
This is said for an opposite purpose ; but still — 
and without gainsaying that purpose — we think 
it reveals features as well, quite specially charac- 
teristic of the class alluded to. 

And this is what the analysis of mature life 
makes of the idol of youth ! This is he who made 
epoch with us, and filled us with the enchantment 
of music, and emotion, and dream ! This is he 
who wrote "Genevieve," and " Christabel," and the 
" Ancient Mariner,'' and it is of him who wrote 
them that cold analysis has drawn so desecrating 
a portrait ! But is not this analysis too harsh, and 
might not admiration and affection limn the same 
features, but with warmer and with truer colours ? 
May not original sensibility, may not bodily in- 
firmity, may not adverse circumstances combine 
to kindle charity and transmute blame into sorrow 
— sorrow that a youth crowned with poetic buds 
so gorgeous, should have grown into no trium- 
phant, but into a disappointing and disappointed 



UPON KANT. 223 

manhood — sorrow, but sorrow not unmingled still 
with gratitude even for what he gave ? Be it so ; 
but, for the sake of the future, neither let the due 
lesson fail. To that let us take, as an astringent, 
the bitter draught of Hegel : — 

" Man, as he is outwardly — that is, in his 
actions (not, of course, in his mere bodily exter- 
nality), so is he inwardly ; if it is only inwardly 
— that is, only in designs, intentions, that he is 
virtuous, moral, etc., and his externality is not 
identical therewith, then is the one as hollow and 
empty as the other. . . . What a man does, that 
he is ; and to the lying vanity that warms itself 
with the consciousness of inward excellence, let 
us oppose the Gospel-text, ' By their fruits ye 
shall know them.' . . . Our great men have willed 
that which they have done, and done that which 
they have willed. ... A man of character is a 
man of understanding, who, as such, has definite 
objects before his eyes, and pursues these with 
firmness. He who wills something great must, 
as Goethe says, know how to restrict himself. 
He who, on the other hand, wills all, wills in 
effect nothing, and brings it to nothing. There is 
a number of interesting things in the world : 
Spanish poetry, chemistry, politics, music; this 



224 DE QUINCEY AND COLERIDGE UPON KANT. 

is all very interesting, and we cannot take it ill 
of any one who occupies himself with, these. In 
order, however, as an individual in a prescribed 
position, to bring something about, we must hold 
by what is definite, and not split up our strength 
in many directions." 

Our general lesson, then, is pow obvious. To 
the genius-airs, and genius-flights, and genius- 
indulgences of De Quincey and Coleridge, we 
oppose, as well the industry, the ingenuousness, 
and the modesty of Kant, as the silence, the self- 
restriction, and the iron toil of Hegel. We hope, 
too, that there are readers for whom other further- 
ances will not be wanting. 



EBENEZEE ELLIOTT, THE COEN- 
LAW EHYMER 



I. — THE BOY. 

In the midst of a busy iron-manufacturing 
community, and in the centre of a green, light 
little room, '^ like a ship's cabin," with portraits 
of Cromwell and Washington on the wall, there 
sits a mild, submissive matron, smiling on a 
smart, good-looking boy beside her, while another 
boy hovers on the outskirts, as if in exile, — an 
exile sorrowfully felt to be deserved, but scarcely 
why. 

It is Mrs. Elliott, with her clever son Giles, 
and her dull son Ebenezer, in the little parlour 
of their house in Masbro'. 

The door opens abruptly to a determined, pug- 
nacious-looking man, followed by another, appa- 
rently a Dissenting preacher. The latter, in truth, 
is Tommy Wright, pastor, preacher, and tinker, 

P 



226 EBENEZER ELLIOTT, 

of, or belonging to, Barnsley. The former is Mr. 
Elliott, named, out of irresistible compliment to 
his character istiquey " Devil Elliott." " He comes," 
he says, '' from the Border Elliotts, who stole 
alike from Scotch and English, no matter which." 

Of politics is their converse. A rank Eadical 
is the "Devil;" a red-hot Jacobin. Hark to 
him ! Pointing to the figure of Washington 
on the wall, he shakes his sides with sardonic 
laughter " at the glorious victory of his Majesty's 
forces over the rebels at Bunker's Hill." 

Politics exhausted, the good men now will 
catechise the boys. Giles, in the centre, can 
answer everything, and receives the plaudits both 
of tinker and " Devil." Poor Ebenezer, on the 
contrary, snooled, snubbed, crest-fallen, on the 
outskirts, can answer nothing. 

Satchel on back, behold them now under weigh 
for school, Giles alert and willing, Ebenezer chilled 
and speculative. Why should he go to school ? 
He does not envy Giles ; he admires him beyond 
all bounds ; for is he not beautiful as an angel — 
clever as an angel? But he — he is a dunce, and 
can learn nothing. Why should he go? The 
master will beat him if he stays away, perhaps. 
Let him ! He hates school : he won't go. So he 



THE CORN-LAW RHYMER. 227 

makes his escape from Giles, and runs for cover 
to the open country. 

What a change ! He has passed the bounds of 
space and time, and entered a new world. The 
broad day receives him with extended arms ; the 
air breathes on him with delight ; the fields rise 
up to him; the flowers, the trees, the sunny 
groves, the birds, all welcome him. He is their 
playmate and their favourite. Ah ! he is some- 
thing here — he is something now. 

So glides the day, but evening comes. The 
truant schoolboy skulks back into the dunce 
again, to hover doubtfully on the outskirts of the 
domestic circle ; loving his mother, for she is 
gentle even to him ; worshipping Giles, for he is 
handsomest of the handsome, the cleverest of the 
clever ; and reverencing his father with an awful 
eye, for is he not the far-famed " Devil," rough 
with his tongue and ready with his hand ? 

The tender bud, however, will not remain 
naked. A husk grows — of self-will, surly, gruff, 
stiff — walling himself in to himself, with his 
beloved images of field and flower and tree. A 
sense of wrong, too, rises — fuel for the flame of 
indignation that will hereafter blaze. 

So sensitive, true-hearted, warm-hearted, he 



228 EBENEZER ELLIOTT, 

has been called " dunce" till he never doubts but 
he is one. In his soul of souls, he believes him- 
self impervious to learning ; and, in that belief, 
actually is impervious. Hardened by incessant 
reprehension, cowed by the brilliant Giles, awed 
by his terrible father — them and their whole 
world he abandons for the refuge of his own. He 
plays on the bosom of the earth by day ; he 
skulks home at night, and creeps to bed, with 
images of terror shaking and unhinging his fine 
young nerves. 

His brother and his schoolmates, however, must 
needs confess his stronger something; on all 
emergencies, they flock behind his pluck From 
his mother comes the sensitiveness, from his father 
the pluck. But he owes the latter not a little 
also to the recalcitration and resistance natural to 
his erroneous position. 

Such is the boy ; but now the father, learning 
of his inattention to school, takes him thence, and 
puts him to work. 

II. — THE YOUTH. 

The change is emancipation. He has now 
work that he can do, and he does it. He is 
surrounded now by associates who have no idea 



THE COEN-LAW RHYMER. 229 

that he is dull, but acknowledge his worth rather. 
Nay, he is their master s son, and they look up to 
him. Even in book-learning, he is their superior. 
Most blessed is the change ! At last he has found 
something he can do ; at last he is respected. 

The abasement he has been subjected to, how- 
ever, has driven everything like pride of position 
out of him, and he cannot consider his fellow- 
workmen as inferiors. Nay, at first he regards 
them as superiors, and looks on them apprehen- 
sively. Every little sign of attention and respect 
that comes from them, he is peculiarly soft and 
open to. The most trifling mark of their very 
notice pleases and delights him. In such circum- 
stances he becomes yielding ; he cannot say them 
nay. Even when they are wrong, he has not the 
heart to say so. He cannot resist their invita- 
tions to the York Keelman. He is frank, warm- 
hearted, social ; and the change of position, the 
new consideration that has fallen on him, renders 
him peculiarly susceptible of consent to the ways 
of those around him. He enjoys the new joy, 
not moderately, but immoderately ; he gets drunk 
at times. 

Still, in all this are the elements of much good. 
Self-respect is given to him, and, from resistance 



230 EBENEZER ELLIOTT, 

to his own errors, come gradually depth, strength, 
and self-control. He is, after all, no drunkard, 
but a hard and steady workman. From his 
sixteenth to his twenty -third year he works for 
his father, as laboriously as any servant he has — 
and without wages, except a shilling or two of 
pocket-money. In the midst of the workshop, 
too, he has not forgotten '' nature." 

He sees a botanical book one day with plates of 
flowers so well executed, that he tries to touch 
" the mealiness.'' He learns to copy these plates ; 
and, in his delight, is lifted " a foot above the 
inmates of the alehouse." In this way he gets 
attached to botany ; roams far and wide for 
plants ; and rapidly accumulates a large collec- 
tion. The attention of every one is attracted with 
admiration to these labours ; and at length — " an 
era'' to poor Ebenezer — even the brilliant brother 
Giles applauds. 

From loving flowers themselves, he gets to love 
descriptions of them ; and thus is attracted to 
" The Seasons." Admiring descriptions, he too 
must try his hand ; he perpetrates verse. More 
and more his own deficiencies open on him. He 
seeks to amend them ; he resorts to books. He 
cannot penetrate and assimilate them by the 



THE CORK-LAW RHYMER. 231 

methods of others, but he can by his own ; and 
at length, without knowing a single rule of gram- 
mar, '' he can write English/' 

Great, then, have been the gains of the youth : 
strength, self-respect, learning, and articulation, 
together with much practical experience of the 
minds and manners of the working classes. 

III. — THE YOUNG MAN. 

As is frequently the lot of genius, this period 
seems to have been the most painful of all — the 
period of struggle, uncertainty, and unsuccess, of 
drudgery and despair. 

He is now married, and happily ; in business 
also, but unhappily. He is in company with 
" many partners ;" and the concern is " bankrupt 
beyond redemption from the first." This he had 
either been too inexperienced to see, or too hlate 
— too shy — to withdraw in time from. His 
partners seem to have been relations ; and pro- 
bably his sensitive and but recently uplifted 
nature was not so confirmed in manhood as to be 
capable of a " no/' He was flattered by getting 
into business at all perhaps; and thought why 
should he, by any petty misgivings of his, hurt 
the feelings of such men as these ? 



232 EBENEZER ELLIOTT, 

Be that as it may, he passes several years here 
"in hopeless efforts and hopeless hopes/' till, 
"losing every penny, he finds an asylum under 
the roof of his sisters-in-law." A cruel situation 
this of crushed pride and down-necked shame for 
such a man ! 

He flees, however, to " nature" again ; he paints 
from her, writes from her ; and has ample leisure 
to ruminate and digest the experience he has 
received. 

IV. — THE MAN. 

At the age of forty, he starts with a borrowed 
£150 in business again. He is active, he is pro- 
vident, he succeeds — " turns £20 a day often,'' and 
accumulates a fortune. 

He is a man now. He has turned all the past 
into food ; it is incorporated with his person ; he 
is taller, stronger, every way abler. He stands on 
his own legs ; he sees with his own eyes. He can 
say Ay or No as it suits him. He is a man at last 
on his own account. In all the relations of life 
he is without a flaw. As a tradesman he is dili- 
gent, straightforward, and sagacious ; as a citizen, 
full of public spirit, vigour, and sympathy ; as a 
husband, spotless ; as a father, everything that is 
tolerant, kind, and considerate. 



THE CORN-LAW RHYMER. 233 

He loves — and aims to be — the bold, the 
strong, the free, the independent. In his own 
shorty abrupt fashion, he is roughly generous ; and 
for all his gruffness, huskiness, and occasional 
fierceness, he is the most warm-hearted and 
benevolent of men. Withal, he is spontaneous and 
impetuous, no respecter of persons, irascible, rash, 
and hasty-handed, as well as hasty-worded. 

His love of nature still abides with him, side 
by side with his indignation of wrong ; and these 
are the key-notes — the warp and woof of him, 
both as a man and a writer. He speaks of the 
primrose and the bread-tax ; of nature's bounty 
and man's injustice. With one hand he points 
to the abased forms of the poor ; with the other 
to the wide domain of beauty which is their 
birthright. He has love and he has hate ; and 
both he expresses vigorously. 

He has a firm, decided attitude, and is not to 
be carried off his feet by the breath of any one. 
In every way, in fact, he has realized the posses- 
sion of an effective practical manhood. 

V. THE TOP OF THE HILL. 

From his fortieth to his fifty-sixth year, such is 
the aspect of the self and circumstances of Elliott. 



234 EBENEZER ELLIOTT, 

The panic of 1837 breaks in on him, however, 
and robs him of '' fully one-third of his savings." 
So, prudently collecting what is left, he retires 
from business, and in spite of his losses, and in 
spite of having, with the most thoughtful affec- 
tion, '^ enabled his six boys to quit the nest," he 
finds that he carries with him no less a sum than 
£6000. These sixteen years, then, no one will 
call unfortunate. 

With his usual sagacity, and notwithstanding 
the vaticinating croaks of his whole circle, he 
advantageously purchases a small property. He 
converts a wdld fox -cover into a cultivated gar- 
den, and builds for himself, his wife, and his 
daughters, a house of simplicity and comfort. 

No modern finery is admitted there : all is of 
the true household fabric — substantial, touch- 
able, usable. He has a maid-servant and occa- 
sionally a man. He owns a St. Bernard dog. He 
possesses a Welsh pony, to which belong a small 
gig and harness — all three costing him £8, 10s. 
He has a piano : that, however, he holds to be no 
luxury, but the essential of the poorest. An un- 
caged canary wings and sings in his parlour, and 
settles often on his venerable head. No ennui 
seizes him ; he is practical to the last : he reads, 



THE CORN-LAW EHYMER. 235 

he writes, he works in his garden ; he is seldom 
idle, and always happy. With the frankest 
courtesy and the freest hospitality, he receives 
as guests, from time to time, some of the best of 
his contemporaries. And thus, walking, driving, 
reading, writing, planting, gardening, happy in his 
friends, happy in his family, he enjoys, for thir- 
teen years yet, the peace of a most golden setting. 

But let us look now a little closer at the figure 
of this brave old warrior, reposing under the 
crimson west on the trophies of his triumphant 
manhood. 

Eeader ! be not displeased to find that he was 
" not a man of large proportions, a true son of the 
forge, broad-set, strong, and muscular ;'' that he 
was " not more than five feet seven inches ; of a 
slender make, and a bilious-nervous tempera- 
ment ;" his mouth " pugnacious" and his features 
"harsh." Spirit laughs at matter; soul looks 
forth ever pityingly and mockingly from its wrap- 
page of clay. Be not displeased with this ; but 
idealize it. Call him up, the slender man with 
the susceptible temperament. He is courteous 
and urbane. His grey eyes gleam with love, or 
lighten with indignation. There is resolution on 
his lip, and " scorn in his nostrils." He walks 



236 EBENEZER ELLIOTT, 

with pride, and his feet would trample tyranny. 
Listen to him ! No weak vanity, no spoiled 
egotism, no blown conceit ! With a broad and 
blunt liberality, he sets himself at his price, or 
modestly below it. " Time,'' he says, " has devel- 
oped in me not genius^ but powers which exist in 
all men, and lie dormant in most.'' How plain 
he is ! A blue waistcoat to his hips, blue trousers, 
blue coat, blue cap ! A man for actual work is 
this, and no high-flyer ; practical, matter-of-fact, 
and resolutely down on the ground. 

No mysticism, no over-refinement, no super- 
subtlety are tolerated here. Nevertheless, love of 
nature and indignation of wrong have worked to 
some purpose in him ; and the wings grown from 
these have borne him well. Like a true poet, he 
has seen " dim morning shake the rainbow from 
his plumage," and found — 

" The stars that give no accent to the wind 
Are golden odes and music to the mind." 

Nor has he hesitated to chant, as if his armed 
foot beat the ground, '' The song of battle" to the 
oppressor : — 

" Day, like our souls, is fiercely dark ; 
What then ? 'Tis day ! 
We sleep no more. The cock crows — hark ! 
To arms ! Away ! " 



THE COEN-LAW EHYMEE. 237 

And oh, in the agonies of his grief for the suffer- 
ings of the world, how he calls and cries and 
shrieks to the All-father — 

" When wilt thou save the people ? 

O God of mercy ! when ? 

The people, Lord, the people ? 
. Not thrones and crowns, but men ! 

Flowers of thy heart, God ! are they ! 

Let them not pass like weeds away, 

Their heritage a sunless day ! 

God save the people ! " 

Such is the nature of his inspiration ; no cMar- 
oscuT of a curiously-intervolved and equivocal sub- 
limity ; but, fervour, fire, directness, pith. The 
man has energy ; the writing, energy. There 
are truth, honesty, and a purpose in him. He is 
content to speak out warmly, strongly, clearly, 
the feelings that nature and her tribes — that man 
and his injustice — cause in him. He has taste, 
terseness, point ; but he has not the sacred and 
peculiar tone — he has not the aroma — of the 
divine and separated bard, " whose soul is as a star, 
and dwells apart.'' He has not even the pomp, 
the long-drawn swell, the mighty period of our 
grander and greater prose-masters. Whether in 
verse or prose, he is simply a hard, firm, vigorous, 
and thoroughly earnest writer ; nor is he eligible, 



238 EBENEZEK ELLIOTT, 

on the whole, whatever be his prominence^ for any 
nnnsual eminence of place. 

There is so much essential manhood in him, 
however, so much of the stuff of genius — that we 
do not abate him thus without a qualm. A little 
more excavation and scooping out of the natural 
imperviousness and opacity, of the natural saw- 
dust and timber, of the brain, — a little more 
initiation and instruction — might so easily have 
conferred on him not only Wordsworth's mystic 
intellection and occult utterance, but even the 
prophetic mantle of an Emerson or a Carlyle, that 
we grudge to place him lower than even the very 
highest of these. 

However this be, not so much for his writing 
as for his manhood, it is that Ebenezer Elliott shall 
be memorable for ever. His worth lies in the 
life that he can fearlessly throw open to his 
fellows, rather than in the words that he has 
either rhymed or written. We cannot regret that 
he did rhyme. Many of his rhymes shall abide 
with us as amulets; nor shall our children's 
children willingly let them die. But after all 
we love better to hear him talk. 

Grey-haired, with the dress, manners, and ap- 
pearance we have described, we like to wander 



THE CORN-LAW RHYMER. 239 

with him over field and meadow, delighted to the 
core with the raciness of his fresh and character- 
istic speech ; for, full of originality, piquancy, and 
point, we feel that it is the language of a genuine 
experience, thoroughly ruminated, digested, and 
assimilated. We like his prejudices even, for 
the crust without is generally indicative of the 
tenderness within. 

How it contracts our lip to hear him exhort a 
friend, "Alter or omit the lines in your poem 
which refer to your detractors ; why stand on 
your defence without occasion ? Live them down 
or die them down !" Such swift, trenchant-like 
strokes but seldom fail him. 

With what a large tolerance, but manly affec- 
tion, he speaks of his sons ! His eldest : " Per- 
haps a more simple-mannered unassuming man 
never lived. He is no poet, and yet there is a 
touch of the poetic in all he does or suffers. If 
he opens his snuff-box to a stranger, he spills the 
snuff, of course ; and he gets on best when he 
stumbles.'' " Henry and Francis (as I wish them 
to do) are living on the interest of money earned 
by themselves, and increased by gifts from me." 
And so on with all the rest. On Edwin, the 
gentleman of the family, " a Tory of course,'' and 



240 EBENEZER ELLIOTT, 

buying an ass, because it was gentlemanly to 
ride, he is particularly amusing, liberal, and 
large. The sunny geniality, the kind, open, frank, 
tolerant heart, denoted by all this, must be ap- 
parent to every one. There is no narrow sourness 
here, no sulkiness — all is provident, considerate, 
and affectionate. 

Towards the close, he talks of his own health 
thus : " I shall recover, I am told. The truth is, 
I improve desperately. I suffer great pain, and 
after losing more than twenty- eight pounds in 
weight, I continue to lose weight at the rate of about 
one pound weekly. You cannot fatten calves in 
that way. If I am not removed suddenly, I shall 
last to April next." It is no weakling, no whiner, 
no whimperer, that can afford to jest thus ; but a 
wise, chastened, and humble heart, — a manly and 
a gallant soul. In all his letters and recorded 
conversations, there is a rich and quaint and 
racy-tongued sagacity, an open tolerance of nature, 
a large and manly common sense. 

excellent old man ! bravely didst thou 
struggle ; and thy reward was victory. Long and 
pleasant was the red evening of thy days. Chil- 
dren numerous, virtuous, prosperous, received thy 
latest sighs ; and thy grey hairs were laid with 



THE CORN-LAW RHYMER. 241 

honour in the dust. A picture, in fact, of such 
consummate success is rarely to be met with 
whether in the life of the man of letters or in that 
of the man of the world. Which of his contem- 
poraries has realized the like ? Behold him " tired, 
but self-sustamed, like one who after hard labour 
reaches his home and rests on his own hill-top, 
envying no man, feeling that he is no longer 
wanted, that he has done his work ; that he can 
die when God calls him, thankful that the battle 
is over, and the good time coming !" 

May such lot be ours ! May we, too, die as he, 
with the notes of the robin in our ears ! May 
we, too, swan-like, sing as he — 

" Brothers, I liave done my best ; 
I am weary, let me rest. 
Let me rest, but lay me low, 
Where the hedge-side roses blow ; 
Where the wmds a-Maying go ; 
Where the little daisies grow ! " 

We must not close this paper without alluding 
to the little volume which has suggested our re- 
marks.^ The quarry from which we cut our statue 
cannot be concealed, and if justice induced no 
acknowledgment, policy would compel it. 

1 The Life, Character, and Genius of Ehenezer Elliott, the Corn 
Law Rhymer. By January Searle. London, Whittaker and Co. 

Q 



242 EBENEZEE ELLIOTT, 

The life of Elliott, by January Searle, is a most 
eloquent, kindly, and affectionate performance ; 
where the sympathy of at least an equal, if not 
exactly a kindred spirit, warm but discriminating, 
sufficient to inspire but inefficient to mislead, 
kindles the subject with the true fire, and invests 
it with the most delightful interest. Peer greets 
peer with the most noble fervour, and the com- 
monest reader is exalted and enlarged. The 
conduct of the work is exceedingly judicious : 
admitting not the firm drawn inferences of the 
biographer only, but the grounds of them also, it 
is rendered as valuable as interesting. In this, 
as in former writings of January Searle, there 
are sound criticism and keen analysis. And still 
do images, the freshest and the fairest, live to his 
presence ; nor has he laid aside the knightly 
pen that touches all into the chastened gold and 
simple sunniness of the old romance. 

Such passages as the following will show our 
meaning : — 

" There is no mistaking the man : like the 
warriors of the old chivalry, wherever he ap- 
peared, he left the mark of his battle-axe behind 
him." 

" His wild spirit never was entirely tamed ; 



THE CORN -LAW EHYMER. 243 

and the spots and claws of the leopard are every- 
where visible/' 

" No sooner do the dark aspects of humanity 
pass over his mind, than he bursts forth with 
passionate and vehement exclamation ; and the 
calm heavens and the meek and beautiful earth 
are suddenly darkened and distorted with the 
fiery ashes of his wrath." 

" He gathers fresh strength at every step ; and 
heats up the thunder from the hard highway!' 

" Every painful throb and every agony of the 
heart were familiar to his ear ; and he reproduced 
them in melodies which drop down into the soul 
like the tears of music!' 

" He would utter the finest things, one after 
another, with the throat of ^tna ; scattering 
them about in blasts of fire and thunder. He 
was a sort of walking earthquake, clad in flowers 
and rainbows ; one of the most beautiful and 
terrible of men." 

We had marked other passages ; but to prove 
the mineral fewer would suffice ; and he who 
requires more has small skill in such geology. 

FINIS. 



EDINBURGH I T. CONSTABLE, 
PRINTER TO THE QUEEN, AND TO THE UNIVERSITY. 



HANDBOOK 

OF THE 

HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 

By dr. albert SOHWEGLER. 

TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED BY 

JAMES H. STIRLING, LL.D. 



OPIM-ION-S OF THE PRESS. 

From the Freeman's Journal, October 21, !867- 

" The treatment of the first epoch is singularly interesting « . . 
the metaphysical stnd«nt who likes a short course of philosophy 
will find much useful information in the Handbook." 

From the London Review, Nevemler 2, 1867. 

" Those who are acquainted with the other works of Dr. Stirling 
will be disposed to congratulate Schwegler on falling into such 
good hands. It will be difficult to mention any one in England 
so well versed in the philosophy of Germany, from Lfeibnitz to 
Hegel, as the translator of this Handbook, Dr. Stirling is also a 
man of independent thought, fearless judgment, and a meta- 
physical appetite, that enjoys with the keenest relish the heavy 
and somewhat unpalatable systems of German speculation. The 
subtleties of thought and expression in which Berlin professors 
delight are quite to our translator's taste. ... It would be hard 
to praise the Handbook too highly, and we hope to hear that within 
a short period it has taken the place of Lewes and Eenouvier in 
the hands of our young philosophical student." 

From the Glasgow Daily Herald^ November 16, 1867. 
" We should hardly call a book of this character here by such 

r 



a modest name as a ' Handbook/ because handbooks, especially 
handbooks of philosophy, are generally of the most meagre and 
trashy description. The student, however, will find this little 
history of three hundred and forty pages crammed full of informa- 
tion, systematized and clearly expounded by a mind that took in the 
whole range of philosophy at a glance. . . . Dr. Stirling, whom we 
do not now hesitate to call the ablest metaphysical writer we have 
in Scotland, says that to the student of philosophy Dr. Schwegler's 
History is indispensable ; and we believe he is correct. We do not 
know any other work where such a comprehensive view of the long 
life of philosophy from Thales to Hegel is to be found." 

From the Oourant, November 18, 1867. 

" Mr. Stirling has done good service to the student of Philo- 
sophy by translating Dr. Schwegler's admirable and excellent little 
Handbook. . . . We cannot help saying that we trust he will soon 
enable us to form an opinion on his ' Annotations ' by giving them 
complete. There is very much suggestive metaphysical thinking 
in even the small instalment we have received. That Mr. Stirling 
was a thoroughly qualified and competent thinker, we knew before ; 
but he has now shown that he is not less accomplished as a critic 
of the history of philosophy than he is acute and profound as a 
metaphysician." 

From the North British Daily Moil, November 25, 1867. 

'' The annotations appended to the body of the book are valu- 
able." 

From the Chronicle, November 30, 1867. 

"It is a history of philosophy in the ordinary sense, written 
with extreme accuracy and clearness, and with wonderful power 
of condensation. Zeller's ^ History of Greek Philosophy ' is too 
masterly a book to contain much that is superfluous : still the 
earlier part of Schwegler's volume contains in substance nearly all 
that is important in Zeller, except the references and illustrations. 
. . . His translation abounds in vigour and liveliness which is 
quite wanting in the very imperfect version of Mr. Seelye. Schweg- 
ler's text does not stand in much need of annotation. Still the 
remarks which Dr. Stirling has appended are useful in bringing 



Schwegler's results side by side with the conclusions of writers 
popular in England ; and they may certainly claim the merit 
of thorough insight into the points at issue." 

From the Oxford University Herald. 

*'The circumstances narrated, the facts reproduced, the inci- 
dents compiled, and the conclusions deduced, are suggestive of 
historical research and descriptive powers on the part of the writer 
of a high order. Dr. Stirling's translation and annotations are a 
valuable addition to the standard works of the classical library, 
and our only desire in speaking cautiously of the work is that 
the talented translator may be induced to reproduce the rendering 
of ' The History of Philosophy ' in a more elaborate form." 

Frmn the Aberdeen Free Press and Buchan Neios, Nov. 29, 1867. 

" This is a good translation of an admirable book. . . . Avoiding 
the lengthened criticisms in which Lewes frequently indulges, 
Schwegler is able to devote more space to the historical and ex- 
pository part of the subject, and consequently, except in the case 
of the English schools, his delineation of the system of any philo- 
sopher is generally fuller and more minute, and his exposition 
more detailed than the corresponding one in Lewes. We might 
point to the account of the philosophy of Spinoza as a good ex- 
ample of the author's singularly lucid manner in portraying an 
important system. . . . Though containing a great deal of matter, 
economy of space has kept the size of the volume conveniently 
small and pocketable, and, on the whole, while we can recommend 
the book as one admirably serving its professed purpose— a hand- 
book, — it may safely be said that it possesses merits of a much 
higher and more original character than are usually found in that, 
often the most unsatisfactory kind of manufactured commodities." 

From the Morning Journal, December 14, 1867. 

^' Its careful and intelligent perusal must prove of very great 
service to any one just entering upon the noblest of all studies. 
. . . This German handbook deserves all the merit assumed for it 
by the translator, in respect of its clearness, fulness, and connected- 
ness. . . . The annotations at the close of the volume by the 
translator are both elucidatory and controversial, and throw con- 
siderable light on the early schools of philosophy." 



From the Saturday Review, January 11, 1868, 

Dr. Hiitcliison Stirling himself is neither a confused thinker nor 
an obscure writer. An essay which he has lately published on De 
Quincey and Coleridge shows an intelligence clear of all fog, and a 
power of direct and forcible exposition. Its exposure of Cole- 
ridge^s plagiarism from Schelling, though it would have been more 
graceful had it been less tinged with self-satisfaction, is final on 
the question. His account of the mode, half-conscious, half-un- 
conscious, in which Coleridge lapsed into his appropriation of 
another's thoughts and words, is a really fine piece of psychological 
tracery. So in the little volume which is now before us. Dr. 
Stirling has appended some fifty or sixty pages of annotations, 
which, taken by themselves, will be found very interesting and 
original reading." 

From the Po;pular Science Review, January 1868. 

'* Dr. Stirling gives us a very satisfactory translation of Schweg- 
ler's condensed and useful ' History of Philosophy.' " 

From the British Quarterly Review, January 1868. 

" The manner and matter of the book are facile and intelligible. 
. . . Enough is done to enable us to endorse Dr. Stirling's verdict 
'that Schwegler's is at once the fullest and the shortest, the 
deepest and the easiest, the most trustworthy and the most 
elegant compendium that exists in either German or English." 

From the Westminster Review, January 1868. 

'' Schwegler's is the best possible ' Handbook of the History of 
Philosophy,' and there could not possibly be a better translator 
of it than IMr. Stirling : it is rarely, indeed, that a person of such 
qualifications will be good enough to translate." 

From the British Controversialist, iVo vernier 1867. 

'^ This translation is fluent, readable^ and thoroughly English, 
although it retains the clasp and grasp of the original German. 

The annotations as a whole form a body of powerful 

controversial adversaria to the positive school of speculative 
writers." 



Edinburgh : EDMONSTON & DOUGLAS. 



By tlie same Autlior. 

Recently published, in 2 Vols, Svo,pp. 1164:, price 28s., 

THE SECRET OF HEGEL; 

BEING THE HEGELIAN SYSTEM IN OEIGIN, PKINCIPLE, 
FORM, AND MATTER. 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 

From BeWs Messenger. 

'^ There can be no question whatever respecting the weight and 
solidity of Mr. Stirling's exposition. ... It will mark a period in 
philosophical transactions, and tend more thoroughly to reveal the 
tendencies of modern thought in that direction than any other 
work yet published in this country has done." 

From the Fdinhurgh Courant. 

'' Mr. Stirling's learned and laborious endeavours to unveil the 
mystery of Hegel are entitled to attentive and thoughtful con- 
sideration. . . . Mr. Stirling has applied himself to his subject 
systematically and thoroughly. . . . There can no such complete 
guide be found in the English language.'* 

From the Glasgoio Herald. 

*' This is a most remarkable book in several respects. The 
author is, perhaps, the very first in this country who has laboriously 
and patiently sounded Hegel. . . . Unlike anj^ of the commen- 
tators of Hegel that we have yet seen, Mr. Stirling can always be 
understood by an intelligent and attentive reader. He writes as 
if he wished to make himself plain to the meanest capacity, and 
he has a facility of language and illustration which lights up the 
driest and most abstract reasonings of his master." 



From the Temperance Spectator, 
" A great book has just been published entitled, ' The Secret of 
Hegel,' which, sooner or later, must attract the attention, and 
influence the conclusions, of true thinkers." 

From the Weekly Despatch. 
" A very elaborate, conscientious, and earnest work. . . . We 
express our high estimation of the ability and research displayed 
in it." 

' From John Bull. 

'' If anything can make Hegel's ' complete Logic' acceptable to 
the English mind, such faith and industry as Mr. Stirling's must 
succeed. . . . Those who wish to form a complete survey of the 
great field of German philosophy will do well to study these 
volumes." 

From the London Review. 

'^We welcome most cordially these volumes. ... A work 
which is the monument of so much labour, erudition, perseverance, 
and thought." 

From the A thenceum, 

'^ To say that this is by far the most important work written in 
the English language on any phase of the post-Kantian philosophy 
of Germany would be saying very little. . . . One of the most re- 
markable works on philosophy that has been seen for years." 

From the Churchman. 
"The book itself is of much value, especially at the present 
time. ... It will repay those well who will give the necessary 
attention to its reading. We have to thank Mr. Stirling for setting 
these obscure dicta in as clear a light as they can be set in, and 
making them as intelligible as they can be made." 

From the Eclectic Review. 
" All readers who have the taste and patience necessary for the 
encountering such tasks will be glad to receive Mr. Stirling's 
exposition. We have read it with deep interest. It was a very 
tough task, and he has wrought it in a determined and intelligent 
manner." 

From the Westminster Review. 
" — Has approached nearer to an intelligible exposition of the 
Hegelian philosophy than has yet been accomplished in England. 



... The Preface a remarkably vigorous and masterful piece of 
writing— the book able in the highest degree." 

From the Globe. 
" Mr. Stirling has certainly done much to help the English 
student. ... He is a writer of power and fire— original, bold, 
self-reliant, and with a wealth of knowledge and thought that 
must soon make him distinguished among the teachers of the 
teachers of this country." 

From Professor Masson. 
" The book deserves a cordial welcome." 

From Mr. Cupples. 
" The whole work is in my view a masterpiece— a great book. 
The style, manner, method, and art of it enchant me— to use a 
loose expression among general terms. I consider it to be com- 
pletely successful in what it proposes to do. Its appearance 
should constitute an era at once in the literary and the philoso- 
phical aspect. The ease and fulness of philosophical expression in 
it— the power and wealth of illustration, comparison, assimilation, 
analogy, metaphor, literary filling out and accommodation, and 
finish— are to my mind unique. The labour, the patience — the 
instinct for truth and for metaphysical tracks and trails— the con- 
stant connexion with life — the explanatory method of resuming 
and taking up, so that the reader is taught without almost any 
stress on his own thought — these things continually rouse my 
admiration and delight. The whole book is colossal — a wonder of 
work. The style of it is unique in raciness, original force, and 
utterly unaffected prodigality of wealth— expository, ratiocinative, 
illustrative, literary, familiar, discursive. The characterizations 
of the man Hegel are delicice of literary touch." 

From the Caledonian Mercury. 
" Whatever may be said of the speculative German himself, the 
ability of his expositor is superior to question. Mr. Stirling has 
brought to his work an able and instructed mind, and an unwaver- 
ing confidence in the power and majesty of his master. He is in 
himself a host of critics and disciples." 

From the Scotsman. 
" The Author is a man not merely of large and thorough philo- 
sophical culture, but of strong, rugged, original powers of mind ; 



a crushing if not subtle reasoning faculty ; humour, genuine 
though elephantine, and apt to put its foot upon various philo- 
sophers' toes and reputations ; a sterling, fearless love of truth ; 
and the faith of a religious devotee in the possibilities of the 
Hegelian philosophy. . . . The critic, the historian, the sociolo- 
gist, the physiologist, the student of natural science, v^^illfind ideas 
in exploring after the secret of Hegel that will be useful in arrest- 
ing other secrets." 

From the North American Review. 
"The Author is a man of classical accomplishments, of the 
sturdiest and, at the same time, keenest intellectual faculty, of 
imagination enough to stock an aviary of popular poets." 

From the British Controversialist. 
"It is granted to few in any age— and especially in this age of 
critical rather than of effective thought— to gain by a single effort 
the highest place in any department of literature. This rare feat 
has been accomplished by James Hutchison Stirling. To him 
' familiarity has been converted into insight ; the toils of specula- 
tion have made him strong ; and the results of speculation have 
made him wise.' At a time when philosophic thinking seemed 
exhausted, and panting souls toiled after truth apparently in vain ; 
when realism and psychology appeared to be trium.phant over 
idealism and metaphysic ; when the diviner element in man was 
losing the consciousness of itself, and had begun to be ignored in 
speculations upon human nature ; and when the outward forms of 
Being looked as if they were certain not only to win, but to mono- 
polize the entire attention of mankind — one arose, suddenly as an 
apparition, capable of changing all that. A philosopher in good 
truth — one who, stirred by the love of wisdom, had toiled long and 
longingly to acquire a knowledge of the hidden roots of thoughtful 
life, and who, unrestingly though unhastingly, devoted the vigour 
of manhood's prime to that researchful study which alone repays 
the thinker with revelations— came forth from the seclusion of a 
self-imposed discipleship to lay upon the library table of reflective 
men the results of a 'ten years' conflict' with the mighty mysteries 
of human thought and feeling. Solid, judicious, and capable men 
saw in the book matter for profound consideration, and determined 
to bestow on it a loving perusal and a careful judgment." 



London : LONGMANS & CO., Paternoster Row. 



By the same Author. 

In 8vo, price 5^. , 

SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON; 

BEING THE PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION 
AN ANALYSIS. 



OPINIONS OF THE PKESS. 

From the Scotsman. 

'^ Mr. Stirling has published a separate thin volume, justifying 
his hostile criticisms by details, and dealing altogether a blow to 
the reputation of Sir W. Hamilton's doctrine of perception more 
ponderous than that dealt by Mr. Mill ; for it is a blow struck 
from a higher altitude, and directed by an eye that commands a 
wider range than Mr. Mill's, though its power of near vision be 
not so keenly critical and microscopic." 

From the Aberdeen Journal. 

" Mr. Stirling's works in exposition of the Hegelian philosophy 
stamped him as a writer of the first rank on philosophical subjects. 
. . . We unreservedly give Mr. Stirling high praise as a contro- 
versialist ; he had already earned his laurels as an expositor in the 
field of philosophy. His vision is large, clear, and minute ; and 
as a mental anatomist, he cuts neatly, cleanly, and to the core. " 

From the Glasgow Herald. 

'' Mr, Stirling, by his large work on Hegel, has already proved 
himself a most accomplished thinker, and his present analysis 
certainly shows him to be a severe (perhaps too severe) and subtile 
critic. . . . We place a very high value upon this analysis. It 
shows that the author wiites from fulness of knowledge, and after 
a careful thought ; and it also exhibits ingenuity, dexterity, clear 
decided convictions, and vigorous expression." 



10 



From BelVs Messenger. 

"Mr. Stirling, in preparing tMs treatise, shows the same amounii 
of metaphysical acnteness and intelligence which were so mani- 
festly apparent in ' The Secret of Hegel.'" 

From the Guardian, 

'' It is the genuine product of a peculiar mind which is really 
original and thoughtful." 

From the Fortnightly Review. 

"From onslaughts such as those of Mr. John Mill and Mr. 
Stirling, the philosophy of Hamilton will either perish altogether, 
or will arouse such an earnest activity on the part of its disciples, 
as to make metaphysical speculation once more a great arena for 
intellectual athletes, as of old it was." 

From the Weekly Despatch. 

" The volume is characterized by the same high qualities shown 
in ^ The Secret of Hegel.' " 

From the Edinburgh Courant. 

" His knowledge of metaphysical subjects is plainly thorough 
and extensive ; and his book, as it stands, will very well reward 
the attention of the student." 

From the Westminster Review, 

" There could not be a more vigorous and damaging onslaught 
on Hamiltonianism than that of Mr. Stirling — the more damaging, 
because we have here the result of an unprejudiced examination 
of the writings of that celebrated logician." 

From the London Review. 

" The author of this second volume under notice, bears a name 
that stands high in the list of modern philosophical writers. Mr. 
Stirling's ' Secret of Hegel,' which was noticed in our columns some 
time back, stamped the writer at once as a man of profound 
thought, wide erudition, and great independence of view. ... As 
we might expect from a critic of Mr. Stirling's subtlety, earnest- 
ness, and self-reliance, the scrutiny is very close and unsparing, 
and we must say that Hamilton's reputation comes out of the 
trial considerably damaged." 



11 



From the Spectator. 

" The work of a writer well acquainted with his subject, and who 
deals with his subject in a lucid manner, and with a disposition to 
do justice to the opinions he combats. . . . The difference of posi- 
tion taken in these attacks gives to Mr. Stirling's criticisms an 
interest not destroyed by an acquaintance with that of Mr. Mill, 
while we may learn from it much more clearly the relation of Sir 
William's philosophy to that of Kant, and what advance Sir 
William supposed himself to have made on the great German 
thinker." 

From the British Controversialist. 

''This is the work of a man who is emphatically a thinker. 
James Hutchison Stirling has written a treatise on ' The Secret of 
Hegel' — which, we regret to say, we have not read. There is, 
however, in this harsh-spoken, trenchant, and incisive critique, 
proof enough of ability to give new, fresh, vigorous thought 
to the problems of philosophy. The vision and the insight 
of the man is acute and accurate. The argument against Sir 
William Hamilton's tenets is put in a more telling form 
than it has been presented by its author's 'more distinguished 
contemporary, Mr. Mill ; ' and as it is less discursive it is 
more cogent. The eye with which Mr. Stirling has perused 
the scattered writings of Hamilton has been lynx-like in its 
fault-seeing. The selective faculty which culled the pertinent 
extracts to which he refers as embodying the distinct utterances 
of the doctrine of Hamilton, has been choicely gifted with a sleuth- 
hound's infallibility of pursuit and seizure, despite of all dodges 
and evasions. The logical power by which comparisons have been 
made between passage and passage, thought and thought, is 
cultured and sharpened to the finest ; while the language em- 
ployed in the discussion is terse, animated, varied, well arranged, 
and most effectively put together. It would be difficult indeed to 
mistake the signification of any sentence in the book. Without 
being so pedantically scholastic, it is as translucent as Hamilton's. 
The grasp of his mind is tense, the heat of his passion intense, and 
the language in which he expresses both is sententious, graphic, 
and precise." 



London : LONGMANS & CO., Pateknoster Row. 



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